• @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    332 years ago

    Just started learning French only to find out you need a Bachelor’s in math just to count past 70.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      17
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      In Swiss French we say « septante » (70) « huitante » (80) and « nonante » (90) which is better than counting by 20

      • Ric0laOP
        link
        fedilink
        92 years ago

        Swiss French doesn’t count as French (like Schwiizerdütsch isch nöd Dütsch)

        • Zagorath
          link
          fedilink
          English
          12 years ago

          A couple of articles are telling me that Belgian French speakers use sepante and nonante, but not huitante? Is that the case?

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      12 years ago

      English used to do this too. The most famous example is the first line of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address:

      Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

    • Ophy
      link
      fedilink
      122 years ago

      As a programmer and a linguist, this is the kind of content that really gets the happy chemicals flowing through my monkey brain

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    102 years ago

    As guy who hate French language and was learning in 1999 I can confirm it was pain to read the topic of lesson and the date. I was so happy when we switched to 2000.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      82 years ago

      Whole generations of French students that have no idea they escaped having to write “mille neuf cent quatre-vingt dix-neuf” over and over again, in cursive of course.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    102 years ago

    German translation probably boils down to:

    farbe = '#9FA²'

    More efficient, saves half the characters!

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    82 years ago

    I don’t how you teach basic counting at a young age in French without learning higher grade level math.

    • Kiwy
      link
      fedilink
      32 years ago

      Joke aside, it’s not taught as 4 × 20 +10 but simply “90 is pronounced quatre-vingt-dix” — which kinda is a mouthful, but you rarely count to 90 as a kid anyway.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      3
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Takes notes

      Next time meeting someone who might speaks french: Pontjur fellow frenchman, i need cat wank deez nutz of those poms

  • snowe
    link
    fedilink
    52 years ago

    I had to read a lot of the comments to understand what the post meant.

      • MouseWithBeer
        link
        fedilink
        English
        102 years ago

        The American is how it is supposed to be.

        The British one has the “color” changed changed to “colour” due to British spelling of color.

        The Spanish one has an upside down semi colon because in Spanish you write questions like this: ¿Is this an example question?

        The French one is because the French number system makes absolutely no sense and to say 99 you have to say quatre-vingt-dix-neuf (meaning 4 x 20 + 19).

        I hope this helps somehow.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          42 years ago

          The American is how it is supposed to be.

          The British one has the “color” changed

          [citation needed]

          • MouseWithBeer
            link
            fedilink
            English
            22 years ago

            I mean in code. Not sure how many programming languages are gonna accept “colour”. Or maybe they do and I am wrong, tbf I never thought about it till now.

            When it actually comes to the English language that’s a different story.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              12 years ago

              I don’t know any language where “colo[u]r” is a keyword, or a lexer-level entity tbh, so I’m not sure there would be any difference. Anywhere you can name a variable “color”, you can name it “colour”. C++ allows you to explicitly make one an alias to the other, for example.

              That said, I’ve seen a number of BBCode parsers need to take both “[color=”] and “[colour=]”. Really, we need code and programming languages in general to be less American. It’s 2023 already and in many programming languages I have to name my accounting variables “ano” (butthole) instead of “año” (year).

      • AlternActive
        link
        fedilink
        7
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        French being french. They have no word for ninety for example, it’s four-twenty-ten. Not bullshitting you.

        As in Four (times) twenty (plus) 10.

    • Ric0laOP
      link
      fedilink
      1
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Please elaborate. Any background on this?

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        6
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        The Danish word for 99 is nioghalvfems, which literally means “nine and half five.” Which you could be forgiven for assuming meant 11½. The trick is that a) “half five” actually means 4½, as in half less than five, and b) it’s implied that you’re supposed to multiply the second part by 20. So the proper math is 9 + (-½ + 5) * 20 = 99.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    42 years ago

    I’d argue it’s 4*20+19 in French, though, otherwise you’d probably need to change some of the other 99 to 90+9.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      32 years ago

      Nineteen is dix-neuf though. Which is literally ten-nine. 11-16 all have an equivalent word to the English “teens.” Quatorze for example instead of dix-quatre for 14.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        52 years ago

        Yes but 99 is also literally ninety nine, so the English ones should be 90+9 🤷‍♂️ don’t know about Spanish, though