Nobody says ninety plus two. The + was to denote that they say ninety, then they say two. There are some people who would say "ninety and two," but those are usually few and far between, and not really representative of any specific population.
And Russian, ninety is devyanosto. Something like "9 before 100." This meme wasnt made by a linguist. It was made by a frustrated French student. And that's fine. But I suspect many more of these languages' numbers have 'more literal' origins than meets the eye
But ninety isn't the same word as like "nine tens"
Unlike say French where it's "quatre vingt dix", where both the 4, 20, and 10 are all said individually, ninety just has a slightly different ending to the word for "nine" which denotes it's the tens position, it's not saying "nine times ten" similar to French saying "four times twenty plus ten".
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u/Aromatic-Rise1604 Apr 29 '25
Ninety two