What?
Edit: my research says that half-fifth is how they call 4.5, which is insane. Then they multiply that by 20, holy shit, they are mathematical geniuses. So:
7 + 4.5 * 20.
WHAT THE FUCK.
How about in telling time? Like half seven means 7:30 in British English but is 6:30 in Dutch and German
Half fifth isn’t 4.5 but 90 because of 4.5 * 20. Its the same with half third being 50 and half fourth is 70.
Katre-van-deez-nuts
Ha! Je les ai eu!
Context:
German:
- “siebenundneunzig”
- = “sevenandninety”
English:
- = “ninety-seven”
French:
- “quatre-vingt-dix-sept”
- = “four-twenty-ten-seven”
It’s shit like that why I wonder people just don’t update their languages, remove useless letters, nonsensical loan words exonyms, etc.
LOL, this kind of shit is what happens when people do try to police their language:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_Française
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_québécois_de_la_langue_française
Like many things in life, languages aren’t necessary logical but I’m looking forward to your efforts to finally get everyone into Esperanto!
Or Lojban.
Edit:
Lojban (pronounced [ˈloʒban]) is a logical, constructed, human language created by the Logical Language Group which aims to be syntactically unambiguous.
French Belgians 90 + 7
Not to defend the French but the more correct representation would be 4 * 20 + 10 + 7.
Also if you take this meme to the extreme it would be best to just say “97” which requires a unique word for every number instead of a system to construct them. So I guess there is a balance to be struck in number composition.
also “ninety” is literally just a shortening of “nine ten”, it’s not like the french pronounce the whole thing either, i’d wager it usually comes out more like “katvandisett” which isn’t much worse than “ninetyseven”
