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German Numbers, why said backwards? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3907 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 1 of 18 05 June 2015 at 4:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm just curious if there is some historical reason for this: why are numbers in German said backwards from how it is written numerically? Every other Germanic language (that I know of) says them forwards. For example, 35 is not said dreißigundfünf, but rather fünfunddreißig (5-3). Is there a reason for this?
EDIT: After playing with a translator, I see they do it in Dutch too, but not the Scandinavian languages. Edited by soclydeza85 on 05 June 2015 at 4:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4234 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 2 of 18 05 June 2015 at 5:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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From a simple Google search: why are German numbers backwards
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| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4772 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 3 of 18 05 June 2015 at 8:38am | IP Logged | |||||
Edited by vonPeterhof on 05 June 2015 at 8:38am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5320 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 4 of 18 05 June 2015 at 8:44am | IP Logged | |||||
BTW, knowing the German way of counting might come in handy if you ever decide to study Arabic, because they use the same word order. :-) For example 35 is "khamsa[5] wa[and] thalāthūna[30]." At least one German mathematician feels like you and wants to change the system. He set up a Verein dedicated to this cause: Zwanzigeins. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3542 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 5 of 18 05 June 2015 at 11:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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We do this in English too. You don't even have to pick up that old of books to see it quite commonly come up in literature. Just a random search of project Gutenberg produces some quotes such as these:
"her ladyship would have kept her daughter in pinafores up to her present age of six-and-twenty" "Mrs Sarah Gamp was, four-and-twenty years ago, a fair representation of the hired attendant on the poor in sickness" "a man of four-and-thirty must try and act the part" etc. I'd have to check but as I recall I believe all figures in the King James Bible are also read in a similar fashion. Of course if you write out the numbers in digits there's no telling how someone could read it: 1234 Is it "one thousand, two hundred thirty-four", "twelve hundred thirty four" or "twelve hundred four-and-thirty"? Does it ultimately make any difference? All such readings are equally grammatical and it really boils down to matters of convention, just like we now have the preferred convention to read the current year as "twenty fifteen" rather than "two thousand fifteen". You have only to go back a few years to hear competing conventions such as "two thousand three" vs "two thousand and three" vs "twenty oh-three" etc. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3907 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 6 of 18 05 June 2015 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Right, I did and I saw that exact page, but given that it's not such an easy question to answer and that this is a site about languages I figured the folks on here might have something interesting to say about it.
Oh I have no interest in changing the system, I was just curious as to the origins. Given that Germany has produced some of the most brilliant physicists and mathematicians, as well as being the world standard in engineering, perhaps it's us that should change our system! I didn't think about us using it in the teens for the English system. One interesting point that was made in that link from Via Diva was that (in a time before writing) that they may have found it redundant to state the 10s place first, since it is the 1s place that is changing; if you're counting from 30-39, we already know we're in the 30's, so it might make more sense to enunciate the 1s place by saying it first (1 and 30, 2 and 30, etc). I was also unaware that this idea is also used in English literature; now the more I think about it, maybe it's us modern English speakers are the ones that have it backwards. I've always found numbers in languages interesting as it gives insight to how older cultures thought. Like how French doesn't have a 70, but rather 60+10. Or the link between latin-based numbers and the Gregorian calendar (using Italian as an example, sette=7 but settembre is the 9th month, otto=8 but ottobre is the 10th month, and so on). But I digress. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5135 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian* | Message 7 of 18 05 June 2015 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
Reading this thread, I remember my Facebook status several days ago whose mean was this:
Edited by Monox D. I-Fly on 06 June 2015 at 1:29am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 18 06 June 2015 at 12:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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In Gaston Dorren's Lingo: A Language-Spotter’s Guide to Europe there's a chapter on Breton numbers - a combination of the backwards system, vigesimals and "half-hundred".
Example: 73 three-and-ten and three-times-twenty (13, 60) 52 two and half-hundred (2, 50) (All Celtic languages work like that, more or less.) Compared to that, German is pretty easy. Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 07 June 2015 at 8:26pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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