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I don't understand how the author is judging complexity. The top one, Huli, is a base-15 number system but looks quite regular otherwise. French, on the other
by jazzyb 8y ago
I don't understand how the author is judging complexity. The top one, Huli, is a base-15 number system but looks quite regular otherwise. French, on the other hand, switches from a base-10 to a base-20 at 80 and then switches things up at 97.
According to the listing, Welsh sits somewhere between these two but it has separate numbering systems for {20s, 40s, 60s, 80s}, {30s, 70s, 90s}, and {50s}. That seems much more complicated than either Huli or French.
- nextstep 8y agoI think it’s implied that base-10 is lowest complexity (this page is for English speakers) and I think that is why base-15 is more “complex” than the weird French system which is mostly addition of base-10 primitives.
- jgh 8y agoyeah came here to say this. Huli seems to be pretty much the same as english except base-15 instead of base-10. It even has the special case of the second 10 or 15 being different in form from the rest of the numbers. edit: actually it seems like the Huli system is more uniform than English. It doesn't switch up the word order after 15. So it's "15 and 1 ..." whereas english goes "3 and 10.." and then "2x10 and 1..."
- yorwba 8y agoHuli appears regular, but a construction like "ngui ki, ngui tebone-gonaga tebira" to mean "fifteen twos and the three of the third fifteen" does seem like quite a mouthful for 33.
- jstanley 8y agoIt's not "fifteen twos" but "two fifteens". They're just counting how many fifteens they've got: "two complete fifteens, and 3 from the third fifteen"
- abhishekjha 8y agoIs the complexity based on pronunciation here?
- Robin_Message 8y agoAlso, Swiss French, which has proper words for seventy and ninety, is considered more complex than French French, even though I'd consider having specific words simpler (especially given the complexity of 97 (which is said as 4 x 20 + 10 + 7)
- oblio 8y ago67 isn't much better, either. It's 60 + 10 + 7.
- Coincoin 8y agoAlso, number triads ending in 1 or 11 smaller than 80 need an 'and' conjunction. And numbers ending in 1 need to concord in gender. What a mess. Before the 1990s there were also all sort of over-complicated hyphen rules. Thank god it's now simpler; hyphens everywhere.
- davedunkin 8y ago77?
- oblio 8y agoYes, 77, you're right. I can't edit the comment anymore :( See what happens when you're used to a saner numbering system? I always hear "soixante ..." and my brain goes "6... something" :p
- stromgo 8y agoDid you interpret the table backwards? Swiss French is considered simpler: 1. (most complex) 19. French 33. Swiss French 69. (simplest)
- Robin_Message 8y agoYes, yes I did! Thanks, that makes a lot more sense!
- Jtsummers 8y agoHuli seems to change (though using a common root?) the words for the small numbers (like 1, 2, 3) when they get applied to how many 15s have been counted. "one fifteen" is "nguira ni", where does "ni" come from? "two fifteen" is "ngui ki", "ki" from "kira", why'd "nguira" abbreviated? It's regular in construction, but the words change and drop parts of the basic number without a particular pattern (as an outsider to the language). "kira" -> "ki" makes sense. "duria" -> "dauni" -> "dau" kind of makes sense, but adds an extra letter (how does the sound actually change?). "tebira" -> "tebone" -> "tebo". A pattern is forming. Drop the "r-" and replace it with an "n-" (except for some) and later drop the "n-".
- dingo_bat 8y agoAgreed. Hindi is ranked 4th most difficult but the system is identical to English (rank 41). Just the symbols for the digits are different. Even they are similar looking!
- nileshtrivedi 8y agoNot at all. As an example, consider how 55 and 57 are pronounced. "PachPAN"and "SattaVAN". The components have changed arbitrarily for no reason. 70 is "Sattar" but 71 becomes "IkHattar". 2 is "Do", but 12,22,32 use "Ba" as the prefix. Plenty more cases like this. Compare this to "Fifty five" and "Fifty seven".
- abhishekjha 8y agoI noticed that Hindi hasn't been represented by its own script in the 'Number' column which it should. http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/ts/language/number/hindi.html http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/ts/language/number/hindi.html
- kra3 8y agoThat, is the problem with transliterating into English. Otherwise it is quite staight forward (even the pronunciation). Also, language's ability to conjugate words has to be considered. Languages branching from sanskrit,
- Manishearth 8y agoHindi/Marathi are not easy, you almost have to memorize the numbers 1-100. Hindi and Marathi both have dedicated names for the tens (11, 12, 13, ...) and after that numbers are named in the reverse order of their digits. E.g. 45 will be five - forty. _except_ the word for five will be different from the word for five in, say, 75. Similarly, the word for "fifty" in the fifties is different for many of them. There's a lot of variation which you basically don't realize if you speak these languages natively, the variation can't be boxed into "rules" to make it easy to learn, and the end result is that you just end up implicitly memorizing it. It's hard to realize because you basically end up modeling this subconsciously as there being multiple ways to say "five" and multiple ways to say "seventy", so the numbers seem to be following a fixed scheme, but in reality you've learned which synonym to use where. In fact when folks talk about french numbers being weird and complex, this is often the counterexample I give. I suspect this complexity arose from having synonyms for numbers which eventually randomly settled down, and also from having sandhi (rules for melding words together) which got corrupted over time, leading to things like "tay/ees" vs "chau/bees" The website probably should have used the "different form"/"different word" thing it did for English. But note that the site did consider "twelve" to be its own number, not 10 + 2, which is basically what's happening here too, just extended 1-100.
- gkya 8y agoIn french it's base ten only. AFAIK it's just the names, particularly in France, that are a bit confusing. I don't think francophones think of quatre-vingts as 20 20 20 20, but as 80. Just like english is not base-12 because its eleven and twelve, and not oneteen and twoteen.
- andreareina 8y agoJust the names doesn't account for 80 + 10, 80 + 11, ..., 80 + 19.
- gkya 8y agoIsn't it like quatre-vingts and ten, eleven, etc?
- ambicapter 8y agoquatre-vingt, quatre-vingt-un, quatre-vingt-deux,...,quatre-vingt-dix, quatre-vingt-onze, quatre-vingt-douze,...quatre-vingt-dix-neuf, cent,...
- jacobolus 8y ago97 is pronounced like "four-score-ten-seven".
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- panglott 8y agoPutting Japanese at such a low complexity shows a lot about the author's criteria and bias. Japanese numerals are quite easy, but when it comes to actually counting things, it is quite complex. There are two series of numeral words that are used in different contexts, as well as dozens of counter words that pair with a variety of semantic categories. Many combinations or number + noun have quite irregular combinations, like "hatachi" (20 years of age) or "hatsuka" (20th day of the month).
- osdiab 8y agoYeah, I was definitely thinking that Japanese counting is way more complex than Chinese counting.
- DonaldFisk 8y agoFrench spoken in Belgium and Switzerland has 70 = septante and 90 = nonante. In parts of Switzerland, 80 = huitante.
- bassman9000 8y agoHe clearly states it's his opinion. E.g. mandarin is one of the least complex for him, and yet http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/ts/language/number/mandarin.html http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/ts/language/number/mandarin.html