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16 points
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Because way back when, before sensible systems, they used base-20, and despite now running base-10, the base-20 is stuck in the language.

Edit it’s sort of in most languages actually, not just to that extent. I mean, English has “twenty-one”, but no “onety-one”. 1-20 have their own numbers in most languages I think, and after twenty you just repeat the first 10 and add whatever tens you like, whereas the French sometimes repeat the first 20 and add an amount of twenties

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3 points

English has “twenty-one”, but no “onety-one”.

But you have teens? Thirteen, fourteen etc? It’s just that a dozen was kind of special, so eleven and twelve are kind of irregular, but afterwards it’s just ordinary base 10, isn’t it?

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3 points

But the endian switches for the teens — twenty three is “tens place ones place,” but thirteen is “ones place tens place.”

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1 point

Well, English does. Not my native language.

Yes, my point exactly. No “onety-one”, because “eleven”.

Same with other languages.

But “thirteen”, “fourteen” etc, you think are as regular as “twenty one”, “thirty three” “forty five”?

It is base-10 all the way through, but I’m just pointing out that probably at one point in history, even other languages, for some reason, counted 1-20 differently than 20+ numbers and they sort of stuck.

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