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Re: number and words

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On Thu, 3 May 2012 15:12:25 +0000 (UTC), Martin Gregorie
<martin@address-in-sig.invalid> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted
someone who said :

>or, as a simpler example 21 = "twenty one" or "ein und zwanzig", but it 
>wasn't all that long ago that English also used the German spoken number 
>order, as in "a maid of just one and twenty summers"

not all that long ago...

A. E. Housman (1859 1936).  A Shropshire Lad.  1896.
 
XIII. When I was one-and-twenty
 
 
WHEN I was one-and-twenty	
  I heard a wise man say,	
‘Give crowns and pounds and guineas	
  But not your heart away;	
 
Give pearls away and rubies	       
  But keep your fancy free
But I was one-and-twenty,	
  No use to talk to me.	
 
When I was one-and-twenty	
  I heard him say again,	        
‘The heart out of the bosom	
  Was never given in vain;	
’Tis paid with sighs a plenty	
  And sold for endless rue.’	
And I am two-and-twenty,	        
  And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

When I wrote InWords, I found native speakers arguing about how
various numbers should be expressed.  Perhaps these rules are not
written down in some official place. They may be like local dialects.

For Dutch, to settle the disputes I ended up writing Dutch, Old Dutch
and Bankers' Dutch variants. Similarly there are two Spanish variants.

Naming pairs of groups of animals is called the art of venery, e.g. a
brace of pheasants.  Knights would haze pages for not having this all
memorized.  See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/venery.html

I wonder why number pronunciations are so needlessly complicated. It
could be for similar hazing, class distinction, or perhaps to make
numbers more distinct so they could be communicated under less than
ideal conditions. It is not just numbers. It is grammar, pronouns,
irregular verbs. They are more complicated that necessary lacking
symmetry.  Children, when they are learning the language try to
correct it.

-- 
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com
Programmers love to create simplified replacements for HTML. 
They forget that the simplest language is the one you 
already know. They also forget that their simple little 
markup language will bit by bit become even more convoluted 
and complicated than HTML because of the unplanned way it grows.
.

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number and words Daniel <daniel.chmielewski@gmail.com> - 2012-05-02 13:55 -0700
  Re: number and words Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-05-02 17:01 -0400
  Re: number and words Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2012-05-02 14:23 -0700
    Re: number and words Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2012-05-02 16:13 -0700
      Re: number and words Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2012-05-02 19:19 -0400
        Re: number and words Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-05-02 20:05 -0700
      Re: number and words Leif Roar Moldskred <leifm@dimnakorr.com> - 2012-05-02 18:41 -0500
        Re: number and words Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-05-02 20:06 -0700
          Re: number and words Leif Roar Moldskred <leifm@dimnakorr.com> - 2012-05-03 00:06 -0500
            Re: number and words Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-05-03 09:15 -0700
              Re: number and words Leif Roar Moldskred <leifm@dimnakorr.com> - 2012-05-03 12:00 -0500
                Re: number and words Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2012-05-03 13:26 -0700
      Re: number and words RedGrittyBrick <RedGrittyBrick@spamweary.invalid> - 2012-05-03 10:03 +0100
        Re: number and words Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2012-05-03 06:15 -0300
        Re: number and words Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2012-05-03 14:08 -0700
          Re: number and words glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-05-04 05:49 +0000
            Re: number and words Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2012-05-04 06:46 -0700
              Re: number and words glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-05-04 19:41 +0000
      Re: number and words Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2012-05-03 14:14 -0700
    Re: number and words Daniel <daniel.chmielewski@gmail.com> - 2012-05-02 16:20 -0700
      Re: number and words Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2012-05-03 15:12 +0000
        Re: number and words Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2012-05-03 14:28 -0700
          Re: number and words Tom McGlynn <taqmcg@gmail.com> - 2012-05-03 15:32 -0700

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