Re:Why are German numbers backwards?
by ginko on Sunday November 28, 2021 @07:00AM
(#29368208)
Or Danish where 90 is halvfems or (5 - 1/2) * 20
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... which is especially embarrassing because they got rid of the problem in Swedish and Norwegian.
With one small exception in Swedish. We still do it backwards for some numbers in the 10-19 range. 13 = tretton (three ten), 14 = fjorton (four ten), and so on.
95 could be spoken as "fifteen and four score" in English, and I'm told my great grandfather did this, though people thought he was old fashioned.
It would not be the Danish "five and half the fifth score" though. This is crazy.