• Zyratoxx@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yes, Germans say numbers like that. (It only applies to the tens tho)

      Roughly translated you’d say two-and-ninety (without the minus, I just made those so it doesn’t look that cursed)

      It’s mainly because at least in German it flows better than ninety two would. There have been pushes to accept ninety two as well but acceptance has been and continues to be scarce.

      • someguy3@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Ow my brain.

        Also funny because I had assumed English got the numbering system from German.

        • krnpnk@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          You probably did, but then you did the sensible thing and (mostly) changed it around. You can read some 19th century novels and find stuff like “I am two and twenty years old”.

          Mostly because it’s still the old order for the teens. 1616 could be read as sixteen hundred sixteen, right?

          • someguy3@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            I don’t think I’ve seen people read 1616 as sixteen hundred sixteen. You could read 1600 as sixteen hundred, but when there are numbers in the tens and ones spots I don’t see anyone using it. The whole thing using sixteen-hundred is weird to me, it’s one thousand six hundred sixteen.

            • krnpnk@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              I’ve heard it lots of times (sometimes just as “sixteen sixteen”) - mostly for years though.

              And it seems like Wikipedia agrees:

              In American usage, four-digit numbers are often named using multiples of “hundred” and combined with tens and ones: “eleven hundred three”, “twelve hundred twenty-five”, “forty-seven hundred forty-two”, or “ninety-nine hundred ninety-nine”.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_numerals)

          • Vittelius@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            And that’s because the numbers we use today where originally brought to Europe by Arabs. Arabic is read right to left. So having reading numbers that way used to be the ‘correct’ way in lots of languages. German is just one of the few ones that stuck with it.

          • someguy3@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 year ago

            Hmm is that actual English usage or an author thinking in German and translating badly (there were lots of German immigrants to North America).

        • ValiantDust@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          I think they used to do it in English as well. For example I remember Jane Austen using both twenty-one and one-and-twenty. So I’m guessing it used to be the same as in German, then for some time you could use both and now one-and-twenty is not used anymore.