Danish numbers - A defense
You’ve probably noticed that there’s a lot of Discourse™ surrounding the French numeric system. If you’ve dug a little deeper, you might have noticed the same thing with the Danish numeric system, and that is why I am here today.
To defend this piece of shit numeric system, because you all keep saying it makes no sense, when really it does, but no one has explained it to you.
So we start off with the first 10 numbers:
0 - zero/nil - nul
1 - one - en
2 - two - to
3 - three - tre
4 - four - fire
5 - five - fem
6 - six - seks
7 - seven - syv
8 - eight - otte
9 - nine - ni
Pretty easy and understandable, right?
Let’s move onto the next three:
10 - ten - ti
11 - eleven - elleve
12 - twelve - tolv
Now we’ve established that eleven and twelve don’t make sense in either Danish and English, so we’re not going to spend any time on that, sorry.
Moving on:
13 - thirteen - tretten
14 - fourteen - fjorten
15 - fifteen - femten
16 - sixteen - seksten
17 - seventeen - sytten
18 - eighteen - atten
19 - nineteen - nitten
As with the first ten, they look similar, and are pretty sensible.
This is where it gets a little wilder:
20 - twenty - tyve
I’m going to say that while English is definitely closer to “two-ten”, Danish has its reasons. Tyve is derived from the Old Norse word tjogu/tuttugu which literally means “two-tens”.
Onto tens + ones:
21 - twenty one - enogtyve
We literally just change the order, en og tyve=one and twenty
I’ll just skip the rest of the twenties because they’re similar to 21, so:
30 - thirty - tredive
Tredive is derived from, yet again, Old Norse, where it was called þrír tigir, literally “three tens”. Funnily enough, the English thirty is derived from thritig, which looks remarkably like þrír tigir, don’t you think?
Now we’re at the place where the real discourse starts:
40 - forty - fyrretyve → fyrre
While Danes usually just say fyrre, the proper word for forty is fyrretyve. If you remember, tigir was ten, then you might be able to guess, where fyrretyve comes from – fjórir tigir, which literally just means “four tens”. Yes, I admit that it’s a bit problematic that tjogu and tigir became the same word, but ya know, shit happens.
And we move on to the really good part:
50 - fifty - halvtredsindstyve → halvtreds
Let me split it up for you (why is the d there? idk): halv tre sinds tyve - half three times twenty, meaning halfway between two and three times twenty. “-sinds-” is, according to what I could find, derived from sinde meaning time(s).
I think we can all agree that 2.5*20=50 :)
60 - sixty - tresindstyve → tres
Tre sinds tyve - three times twenty, same concept as above
3*20=60
70 - seventy - halvfjerdsindstyve → halvfjerds
Halv fjerd sinds tyve - half fourth time twenty (fourth=fjerde), meaning halfway between three and four twenties.
3.5*20=70
80 - eighty - firsindstyve → firs
Fir sinds tyve - four times twenty
4*20=80
90 - ninety - halvfemsindstyve → halvfems
Halv fem sinds tyve - half five times twenty, meaning halfway between four and five twenties.
4.5*20=90
In short: next time you mock French for calling 80 "four twenties", remember that maybe French isn't the only language, and that you could, idk, keep your mouth shut. That is all, thank you for your attention.
(source: ordnet.dk; Den Danske Ordbog/Danish Dictionary and Ordbog over det danske Sprog/Dictionary of the Danish Language – covers Danish in the period 1700-1950)
