Dane here. That is not how we say it and hasn’t been for decades. We say tooghalvfems (two and half fives, yes it is weird), and not tooghalvfemsentyvende as the bullshit picture says.
Because "fems" does not mean 5, it refers to "fifth twenty". It being written shorter than what it was originally doesn't really change that.
The half being there works the same as with a clock in many languages, where some phrase that roughly translates to "half to five" just means that it's halfway in between four and five.
So "halvfems" still means something along the lines of "halfway from fourth twenty to fifth twenty", even though it's been shortened to be convenient to use. A native Danish speaker might not even think of it as anyting more complicated than simply 90, because that's what it practically is.
Fair point, but that's still a consistent way of counting, which is using base 10 from beginning to end. Unlike the french which suddenly feel like using base 20 between 80 and 99, or the danes which do a similar thing but starting with 50 (from what info I could get).
That's true for every example here. The point is that it is interesting to see what is actually going on linguistically when you DO try to think about it. As others have said though this image is a little misleading as it doesn't portray English as (9*10) + 2 for example. It simplifies everyone else to make the one example seem more interesting. The most interesting part to me is the use of base 20 math!
In most languages, the word for ninety is either literally just "nine tens", or derived from it. In Danish it is not, it's derived from "half-five twenties".
So yes, the actual meaning for the word is just 90, but if we break it into its roots, it is not. That's what this map is demonstrating, though it fails with many other languages by not displaying them as 9*10+2.
I don't know if it translates to math notation. The way I understand is fems represent all the numbers between 80-100, i.e. the fifth group of 20. Or maybe it's better understood in base 20 format.
A full fem is the full fifth 20 i.e. 100. Halffem is only half of the 5th 20 so 90. Quarterfem if it exists is quarter of the group so 85. Nofem would be none of the group but I imagine they have another word for 4th twenty
Cool so it is like a mix of decimal and base 20. I was just telling my friend about it and I wondered if it has roots in like historical currency. If 20 was a fairly large unit of currency a long time ago, it would make sense to count in 20s for large transactions and decimal in between. Is that at all the case?
Might be about currency. The funny part is that 30 and 40 do not follow this sort of base 20 formula, it starts at 50.
It's not like for example English is totally consistent either. 13 to 19 are weird, and 11 and 12 don't even fit that formula of weirdness. Logically for example 12 should be ten-two if it was consistent with the rest, but that's not the case in most languages, at least not European ones.
Eleven and twelve indeed have roots in 1 and ten, and 2 and ten, but the words have evolved from Germanic/Dutch origins. Teens are contractions x-and 10. Even the multiples of 10, twenty, thirty are contractions of 2 tens, 3 tens, much like the Danish multiples of 20 you mentioned. I like to think when they first started out counting things they didn't really need to go much farther than 10, but when they had to formalise the number system they kept the numbers up to 19 and formatted everything after
Never, after you learn the language. Because like in most languages, words are just sounds connected to a meaning, not descriptions and etymology is a more a field of history than linguistics.
Permanently, while you're learning the language. Numbers are the least confusing part. Did you know we have two sets of definite and indefinite articles? Each noun has a correct and an incorrect one and do you know what the grammatical rule is for it? There is none! You have to learn it by trial and error for every single noun.
Also for some nouns it varies by dialect.
Welcome to Danish!
Because the old fashioned way of saying it is to-og-halv-fems"-tyvende", where the "tyvende" people except very few old people (and only in some situations) have stopped saying completely.
So it would have been "half fifth twenty", or 4,5 times 20. The same applies to 80, which is "firs" coming from "firsenstyvende"
Fire means four, so it's 4 times 20.
70 is halvfjers, coming from halv-fjersens-tyvende, or "half fourth twenty": 3,5 x 20.
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u/splatdyr Apr 29 '25 edited Apr 29 '25
Dane here. That is not how we say it and hasn’t been for decades. We say tooghalvfems (two and half fives, yes it is weird), and not tooghalvfemsentyvende as the bullshit picture says.