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8 points

Are all German numbers like that?

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25 points

No, it gets more confusing the more numbers you add. 34563 4+30 thousand +500 3+60

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6 points
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Ow my brain.

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

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8 points

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?

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4 points

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.

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8 points

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.

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10 points
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Man I’d love for that to catch on, mostly so it’s easier to learn. Kids get confused by the order all the time. It’s even shorter in some cases.

Also, the reverse order makes dictating phone numbers such a pain.

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3 points

Definitely. Up until now I always dictate phone numbers with digits as pairs: like “neun, zwei” instead of “zweiundneunzig”

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3 points

My kids grow up with multiple languages. I told my daughter early on not to bother with German numbers larger than 20, and to select a different language to do math in her head.

For a few years she was just saying larger German numbers like 9-2, or was writing them down, though now at 7 she seems to get better at converting them correctly.

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4 points

(It only applies to the tens tho)

Tens, but also ten-thousands, ten-millions, ten-billions … you get the gist.

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5 points

some (very few, i think it’s only the “teens”) english numbers are like that, like seventeen (7+10) for example

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1 point
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Kind of. Those are distinct names rather than seven+ten. It took a long time until I even made that connection that teen probably came from ten.

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5 points

Yes, and it’s so annoying. I’m Austrian, a bit dyslexic, and sometime I just can’t sevenandeighty sixandseventy.

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2 points

Of course, why would 92 be an exception? (Only numbers with a thousand-group ending in 21-99 do that, though)

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2 points

See French going nuts for 92.

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2 points
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What I mean is they also follow their own weird rules, 92 uses the same system as 91 or 93.

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2 points

Only 21-99, after that you say the hundred (thousand, million, etc.) first.

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