• rumba@lemmy.zip
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      12 hours ago

      Ehh, i’m not giving France a pass either.

      The answer to 100 - 8 should not be four twenties and a twelve. We’re counting, not making change.

      French counting is bunk. Way, Way, better then Denmark though apparently

      • Nariom@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        the thing nobody mentions is that the 4x20 part became a word that just means 80 in people’s mind, it kinda not literal anymore, but the Swiss and Belgian ways are still better (edit the 4x20+10 is similarly just 90)

        • vandsjov@feddit.dk
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          11 hours ago

          Most Danes does not know how 92 is constructed - it is just as picture one, second calculation: 2 and halvfems = 92.

          However, I do feel like we’re using Imperial unites.

        • rumba@lemmy.zip
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          10 hours ago

          e a word that just means 80 in people’s mind, it kinda not literal anymore, but the Swiss and Belgian ways are still better (edit the 4x20+10 is s

          And if it was 28 syllables, it would still be 80 in people’s minds. But the words are still four twenty eight for what could easily just be nine eight.

          I get it, but it is really inefficient for something as oft used as counting.

          If it makes you feel better, English is full of crap like that which doesn’t make any sense and I’ll own that as a trash language :)

    • vandsjov@feddit.dk
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      11 hours ago

      I think the first picture jumps over a little bit of calculation:

      9 x 10 + 2

      2 + 9 x 10

      p.s. The third one makes total sense!

  • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    The map is wrong, Czechs can do both 2+90 and 90+2, I am not sure if it’s regional within the country, or depends on the context, but they definitely use both versions

  • schibutzu@lemm.ee
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    52 minutes ago

    I’m actually impressed by this map. The French speaking part of Switzerland is not only differentiated from the German speaking part, it is also differently coloured than France, since Swiss French has more sensible numbers.

  • Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.org
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    23 hours ago

    I’m German and our way of counting is genuinely stupid. 121 would translate to “onehundred one and twenty”. You’d think it’s just a matter of practice but errors related to mixing up digits are statistically more common in German speaking regions. Awesome when it comes to stuff like calculating medication dosages and such. Like it’s not a huge issue but it’s such an unneccessary layer of confusion.

    • EddoWagt@feddit.nl
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      23 hours ago

      Its so annoying with phone numbers as well, depending how someone pronounces is. My mom always says phone numbers in 2 digits, like 06 12 34 56 78 (06 twelve fourandthirty sixandfifty eightandseventy) and you just get confused because you want to type in the first number pronounced

    • llii@discuss.tchncs.de
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      22 hours ago

      Yes! I’m German and I hate it. It’s also very inconvenient when entering numbers into a spreadsheet or something, because you have to know the whole number before you can start typing it.

    • ECB@feddit.org
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      21 hours ago

      As a non-native working in German, the numbers are one of the trickiest parts.

      My jobs generally involve a lot of math and discussions of numbers, and I often struggle with swapping numbers around in my head. Especially because when you get to bigger numbers people often switch between (or use a combination of) listing individual digits left-to-right and saying multi-digit numbers.

      The though is when you occasionally notice natives mess it up!

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        17 hours ago

        My experience living in The Netherlands (which has a similar system) as a non-native whose mothertongue is from the Romance branch is that you eventually get used to it. I think that’s because as your language skills improve you just stop interpreting the parts of the number individually and handle hearing and speaking those “nastier” blocks of two digits as if the whole block is a language expression.

        Even better the apparently flip-flopping between one way of ordering digits and another one in longer numbers (for example: “two thousand, five hundred and two and ninety”) actually makes the strategy of “everything between 0 and 99 is processed as an expression” viable (i.e. “two thousand” + “five hundred” + “two and ninenty”), whilst I’m not so sure that would be possible if instead of just memorizing 100 numerical language expressions we had to do it with 1000 or more.

        (If you’re not a French native speaker and you learn the language you might notice something similar when at some point your mind switches from interpreting “quatre-vingt” as “four twenty” to just taking it in whole block as an expression that translates to eighty)

    • UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev
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      22 hours ago

      The older generation in Norway also uses that format. I usually tell them that we aren’t under German occupation anymore, so they should use the sensible format.

    • blackris@discuss.tchncs.de
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      22 hours ago

      Funny thing: it is the correct way to count like that, also in english. Four-teen, eight-teen etc. They just turn that around beginning with twenty. How obscure is that shit, when you really think about it?

  • frank@sopuli.xyz
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    13 hours ago

    Ugh okay here’s another “Danes shouldn’t be allowed to make number stuff”:

    The time 15:25 is “five minutes before half 4”

    “Fem minutter i halv fire”

    So you round up to 16 before even halfway, what!?

      • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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        3 hours ago

        Yeah the Dutch way of saying time is also messed up, I still have to think about it for a moment every time.

    • Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 hour ago

      I’m very Danish and refuse to adhere to this nonsense. It’s pronounced “three twenty-five”.

    • "no" banana@lemmy.worldOP
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      13 hours ago

      That makes perfect sense to me though. In Swedish we’d say fem i halv fyra. Five minutes to half four.

      But in English half four would be short for half past four. I guess.

      Counting like the Danish, however, that is an abomination.

      • frank@sopuli.xyz
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        12 hours ago

        What’s wrong with “25 over 3?” I see the need for half 4 by itself but things being relative to that is so weird to me

        • "no" banana@lemmy.worldOP
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          12 hours ago

          Well, it’s interesting because that would be the case with 15:20. That’d be tjugo över tre (twenty past three). But specifically 15:25 would be fem i halv fyra (five to half four). 15:35 is fem över halv fyra (five past half four).

          And then 15:40 is tjugo i fyra (twenty to four).

          So :25 and :35 are weird edge cases.

  • Enkrod@feddit.org
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    2 hours ago

    Note to self: For learning a scandinavian language - learn Swedish instead of Danish.

  • StThicket@reddthat.com
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    20 hours ago

    Norway used to count like the Germans, but switched after the introduction of the telephone. There were simply too many mistakes when telling the numbers to the operators, that a change was mandated.

    Old people might still use the 2+90 variant though, but it is not very common.

    • dcat@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      to everyone who reads this dudes comment and starts imagining 75 year old grandmas saying it: i’m 30 and say 2+90, and it’s still very much a thing.

  • ryedaft@sh.itjust.works
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    23 hours ago

    They must have meant 9*10+2 for most of the countries. For French and Danish you would just remember the word for 90 instead of using logic to get there so they are actually quite 90+2.

    • TheOakTree@lemm.ee
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      22 hours ago

      So do you mean to suggest “quatre-vingt-dix” just means 90 and doesn’t also mean “four-twenty-ten”?

      • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        20 hours ago

        Well quatre-vignt-dix is literally translated to “four twenty ten” (why not just nine ten? because historically french evolved with a base 20 counting system).

        But when a french person hears that, they don’t hear those numbers, to them it just means ninety.

        Just like an english person won’t hear. “four-ty”, and think “four-ten” “oh that’s 40”. Because “fourty” was originally “four-ten” (written differently because old english so I rewrote in modern for simplicity) and got shortened down.

        To them “fourty” is just a word that means 40. Just like to metropolitan french people “ quatre-vignt-dix” is just a word that means 90.