how to pronounce numbers

[grsbanks]

(06-26-2018 05:12 AM)cyrille de brébisson Wrote:  Actually, I have long theorised that "older" languages tend to be more like the french and newer ones more like english.
If you look at english, you have special "words" for numbers from 0 to 12. From there on, you have contrustructed words. construction number 1: The teens thir-teen...nine-teen and construction number 2: the rest: twenty-two....

I'm not so sure it has much to do with the age of the language than just general culture differences. An example of an "older" language that is more like English than French with its use of constructed words for numbers would be Japanese, which is over 5000 years old and hasn't changed a great deal in that time. "Constructed" words start as of 11 (十一 juuichi literally means "ten one"). In Cantonese it's written the same way and pronounced sahpyāt, also meaning literally ten one.

How about Welsh? An ancient celtic language that predates English and the Germanic or French influences: 11 is un deg un (one ten one).

Closer to home there's Italian, which also starts with composite words from 11 onwards (undici), as did Latin if you want something a bit older (undecim).

(06-26-2018 05:12 AM)cyrille de brébisson Wrote:  having billions be millions², and trillions be billions²... makes use, once again of the multiplicative (decimal placed base system), while the current use seems like an aditive principle once again... Not good in my opinion!

That's different from what I was taught. I was taught that billions were millions^2 and trillions were millions^3. If mathematics is supposed to be a universal language then we have problems if cultures can't even agree on the magnitude of numbers

(06-26-2018 05:12 AM)cyrille de brébisson Wrote:  Who pronounces that 2nd f [in fifth]?

* grsbanks raises hand