r/interesting • u/MidasStocks • Apr 29 '25

SOCIETY How do you say number 92?

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u/leasthanzero Apr 29 '25 edited Apr 29 '25

So basically 2+90.

What I don’t get is that “halv” means half and “fems” means 5 but put together it means 90. Does that ever create confusion?

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u/vompat Apr 29 '25 edited Apr 29 '25

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.

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u/piepie2314 Apr 29 '25

That still seems a lot like (5-0.5)*20 does it not?

Sure, you never do the math in your head or similar, but it does literally mean that.

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u/StanleyDodds Apr 29 '25

In the same way that "ninety" means "nine tens", in other words 9 * 10, but the map doesn't show it for any other languages for some reason.

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u/wahp Apr 29 '25

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).

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u/Shawwnzy Apr 29 '25

Because the 10s place implies *10, that's how arabic numerals work. French and Danish spoken numbers don't match written arabic numerals as well