Re:Why Is the Dollar Sign a Letter S?
by roel_v on Monday February 09, 2015 @05:10AM
(#9020451)
For anything under 100, in German and Dutch the least significant number goes first: one and thirty, eight and ninety. 100 and above goes before that, so 121 is 'one hundred one and twenty'. The nursery rhyme might be inspired by that, or maybe there was something similar in English back in the day, but either way - I'd say it's highly unusual to put those numbers in that order in English.
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This is getting tangential, but the French way of counting seems to be even more strange with certain numbers. 93 is "quatre-vingt-treize", i.e. "four-twenties-and-thirteen".
(Except in Belgium and Switzerland and this-one-valley-in-Italy et cetera, where it is just "nonante-trois".)
Compared to that, "drei-und-neunzig" is still not bad.
Apparently it was common in the south as well. Some writer who was fined in the 19th Century then lampooned the magistrate as "Monsieur Nonante-Cinque", the fine having been 95 francs.