leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 1 year ago
Look, we’re talking people who call ninety-nine “four twenty ten nine”; you can’t expect them to name things properly.
To be fair, English has a bit of that too if you look at the first 20 digits
One, two, three… Eleven, twelve, thirteen… Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three… Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three…
If English was fully decimal the teens would simply be “Onety-one, onety-two, onety-three” but it’s not because fuck following conventions!
If you say onety one again we’re gonna have problems
Winner. I’d forgotten about that.
Something thankfully not all French-speaking countries agree. But the ground apple is pretty much universal. The alternative “patate” is also widely used,
Stuff from the “new world” (Americas) often got some weird names. Like the “Indian chickens” (turkeys).
sxan@midwest.social 1 year ago
Yeah, numbers in French are really weird.
Look, I’m not criticizing French, or the French. It was just one of those things that struck me when I was learning it, and it pops up at odd times.