Why are German numbers backwards?

[@cadoko]

As a native german I never had problems until I got fluent in english. Now I actually really struggle to say numbers in the correct order, cause I keep mixing up the systems.

[@timpie9346]

Same for me. While I am working, my thoughts are largely in english. And numbers definitely play a role in my work. The looks that people give you, when you struggle to get them right after an 8 hour work day....

[@mikefraser4513]

I have this problem getting late for an appointment. (I was supposed to come at halb-acht..but I came at 8:30)

[@BigBenGermany1983]

They are not reversed! The English ones were flipped through romanization! Count from 13 to 19 in English, and you'll have the Germanic counting system! After twenty, it was romanized in English, for some reason!?

[@Testperson001]

Same for me, it's like a more logical system is clashing with what I know

[@ab-up8gd]

Dude, I'm not even fluent in German, I say German numbers wrong all the time... but I've already started saying English numbers wrong sometimes.

[@namenamename390]

German has a word for confusion that might arise from this, because of course it has. "Zahlendreher" refers to accidentally switching two digits in a number when writing or speaking.

[@KaiHenningsen]

... but not necessarily related to the language. For that matter, I see more switched letters than switched digits, and English doesn't seem to be significantly different from German in that regard.

[@sebastiangudino9377]

@@KaiHenningsen Dude, the word "Zahlendreher" refers SPECIFICALLY to numbers. It has nothing to do with switching letters

[@SlimThrull]

The German language never ceases to amaze me. The have words for everything!

[@gregor-samsa]

@@SlimThrull English has too - just that you have to give the meaning in an extra explanation - whilst in German everything is clear from the beginning as most is just a combination of existing words.....

[@yux]

@@gregor-samsa Bro what 😂

[@ringoderbar1522]

Liked the topic, like the video. I think it's very interesting that English does the same for the "teens", like fourteen which is "4-10". English changes its system after twenty, German just keeps on doing that. And as a German native speaker, I never even realized that we did it differently until my later teens, let alone ever affected me in any way.

[@galaticplays1845]

As a native English speaker this guy has to be high on something because if we're actually looking at it English gets it backwards

[@notafurrysogoaway]

Same with dutch

[@CCSUnit13]

Haven’t finished the video yet but I was thinking this same thing and came to the comments to see what others thought. It’s like English flip flops it’s system from the “teens” to the “twenty’s and beyond” while German just uses the same “teens” system indefinitely. I don’t speak German so obviously the English counting system is second nature to me, but it seems quirky compared to the Germans who don’t flip flop the rules 20 numbers in

[@ringoderbar1522]

@@galaticplays1845 You mean in your area, you say "teen-four"? Or do you mean you continue the "first one-digits, then tens digit", e.g. "one-twenty", instead of twenty-one? I am not even sure which "guy" (me or the person in the video) you are referring too, to be honest.

[@bele13]

​@@CCSUnit13I thought the same thing. He's saying "at this point (20), German does something weird" while simply switching the system in English. I'm not saying one or the other system makes more sense, but it is English which switches and German which keeps to its system.

[@Chestbridge]

I've seen the "German" style of counting in several older British novels. Both Arthur Conan Doyle and H. Rider Haggard use it. I also noticed that their sentence structure sometimes is more "German" than I would expect in modern English!

[@minka866]

I would like read this line.

[@joanaloneathome]

also the literature queen herself, Jane Austen. In 'Emma' for example one can read: " a man of six or seven-and-twenty"

[@Hello-uh5tt]

I first encountered this style when I was reading Great Expectations by Dickens. It was in a scene where one of the characters was getting their remuneration and the payer pronounced the amount as "four-and-twenty." At first I thought that this was idiosyncratic to London in the 19th century but this video has definitely helped me in expanding my worldview and understanding certain ways in which different cultures influence one another and in turn their languages as well.

[@zak3744]

@@Hello-uh5tt There's also one very specific place (that I can think of) where that formulation still exists in modern English, and that's telling the time. Where you have "twenty-five" in a traditional time-telling format, you'll also hear it as "five-and-twenty". My experience would be that it's less common than "twenty-five", perhaps skewed more towards older speakers, but it's not unheard of or weird sounding. And personally I'm pretty sure I've heard it in older generations of my family from both the South-West and from East Anglia, so I assume it's not just a local feature. So where you might have "twenty-five to six" or "twenty-five past two" these might also be naturally expressed as "five-and-twenty to six" or "five-and-twenty past two". A very specific phrase perhaps, but a surviving example nonetheless!

[@Anonymous-wh4ez]

Interesting to see the similarities that existed not so very long ago. I also noticed capital letters for nouns in some 19th century English writing, as in 21st century German.

In Slovenia, we also do the numbers backward, as Germans. And we also have duality, besides plural and singular, when you talk about two "things". It makes learning the language absolute joy :-)

[@KarlDMarx]

Probably because of the Austrians

[@cameroneridan4558]

@@KarlDMarx The backwards numbers maybe but the duality is very Slavic :p

[@Egilhelmson]

Duality is very proto-Indo-European, but has been lost from most language groups. Greek lost the dual number somewhere before Classical Greek became standard, and it just died away.

[@vladimirkurtovic]

🤔57?😉

[@gjvnq]

The dual number still has some fossils in English words like "both".

[@nikaley]

One thing I’d like to mention: the “und” (and) connects the individual numbers pretty well in German. “Einun’zwanzig” really turns into one word, because of the “eins” turning into “ein” and “und” being abbreviated to “un’” (swallowing the “d a little”), while “Zwanzwigeins” still sounding like it’s made up of two words, with the “g” in “Zwanzig” breaking the word into two (sonically). The flow’s just different.

[@Thorsten_Wiegand]

Yes, that probably is the reason we speak this way. The flow in the German language is better if the single digit is spoken first. It is much easier to say this way.

[@lhurgoyfwitcher7553]

Do you think ther is a solution for this? I always thought about this problem

[@panzrok8701]

We could also say Zwanzigundeins.

[@rumpelstilchen]

Einundzwanzig only flows better, because you've been saying this all your life. In English, one-n-twenty would have the same effect as you described with the for “Einun’zwanzig”, but that has no advantage over twenty-one. No?

[@ToxicDluxe]

@@rumpelstilchen no, to switch it up and say "zwanzigundeins" is phonetically very different and flows much less than "einundzwanzig". The Reason being in "einundzwanzig" the "d" is silent not so much in "zwanzigundeins" where the "g" would be a really agressive stop practically splitting the word(s) in half.

[@hannesmayer3716]

I'm an accountant in Germany, and yes, the weird way to tell numbers can make problems. As far as I know, there are more errors like "Zahlendreher" in accounting in German speaking countries.

About accounting domain, the French students in finance school which are trained to work in the exchange market places where transactions have to be entered at the speed of light in the system, do learn to use the number pronounciation like most of the Swiss french speaking people does with the very "perfect" system of soixante - septante - huitante - nonante. This avoids to mistype "soixante-treize" as 6013 instead of 73 (septante trois) or more horrific "quatre-vingt-dix-huit" as 8018 or 80108 instead of 98 (nonante huit). It does not only avoid errors but allows to gain speed in situations where a fraction of a second can represent millions won or lost.

[@troelspeterroland6998]

@ Very interesting.

[@christiankastorf4836]

Imagine a "Zahlendreher" like 52.63m to 52.36m in engineering. Such a thing really happened when a bridge across a canal here in my region had to be replaced. The new bridge was built on a shipyard, put on a pontoon and then towed to the place where it was intended to span the water. Cranes lifted the bridge up, turned it by 90° and tried to let it down on its bearings. "Further to me, please.", "No, further to me.", "No, to me." "SHITTTTT."

[@lucindao]

@@christiankastorf4836 That's worrying. But how far apart was the original measurements. I think you accidentally used 52.63 twice.

[@christiankastorf4836]

Thanks for pointing out that I made a mistake. I corrected it. What happened was that the bridge would of course not lock into into its bearings, it was too short. Technically the readjustment of that blocks was no big problem, but all the mathematics and the drawings had to be altered. The bridge takes cables and pipes across the canal and the joints to the road surface had gaps then which had to be filled. The opening of the new bridge got delayed by half a year.

[@holygooff]

Same in Dutch. I never heard about anyone having problems with it or wanting to change it. It's never going to happen, just like in German. This isn't a problem, just another system. It's only a problem to peope that don't know it and think it is a problem. I switch between counting in Dutch, English, German, French without effort.

[@LaVieDeReine86]

Ik ben Duits. Ik vind het nog steeds stom. het is niet intuïtief, logisch of goed wiskundig.

[@trismegistus2881]

Also Dutch and I do find it confusing in the case of telephone numbers. Better to say each number separately.

[@afoley2812]

The Germans have got it right. They are Arabic numerals, and that is how they are said in Arabic, though Arabic script is also read from right to left.

[@nanettetredoux7613]

Also in Afrikaans.

[@skirnireta1003]

I agree. I'm quite aware of this problem with our way of counting (though I do point this to my uk friends that they got this weird thing as well with the teenage numbers), but it's curious that most of my german friends are not really conscious aware of this problem. I often see people, when they are listening to numbers to write down, some write the hundred value number first, then wait for the 10 value number to be spoken, directly followed by the already heard 1 value number. Some write them in the order they listen to it, left, right, middle. It's also interesting to see, how they speak numbers. Some does this with pairs e.g. 34 53 Also some difference here, some say "Vierunddreißig dreiundfünfzig", while other say "Vierundreißig Hundert und dreiundfünfzig". And the normal 3453 "Dreitausend vierhundert und dreiundfünfzig" I myself usually say them one digit after the other, from left to right. At university, I tried speaking using "Dreitausend vierhundert Fünfzig und drei". Though sadly, that was usually viewed as confusing, even though some few saw the logic behind it. I can't really see with my fellow citizens around me, that the way we german and dutch count, will change anytime soon.

[@lk42000]

Fun fact, Slovene also uses the German counting system and it really confuses other native slavic speakers when they learn Slovene, although the words for the digits are very similar. The number 21 is "Ena-in-dvajset" (1-and-20) in Slovene and "Dvacet jedna" (20-1) in Czech and "Dvadcjat Odin" (20-1) in Ukrainian and Russian Edit: I didn't know that Czech also uses the German counting system alongside the one used by most languages

[@matj12]

In Czech, there are both systems. Both “dvacet jedna” and “jednadvacet” are correct. The second system is considered archic, but is used for morphologic manipulations because doing them with just one word is easier than with two words. Examples: “dvacátý první” / “jednadvacátý” (twenty-first), “dvaceti jednice” / “jednadvacetice” (a twenty-one-plet)

[@lk42000]

@@matj12 Wow, I didn't know that. When did the German counting system fall out of use in Czech (except for morphologic manipulations)? Do you know if the Slovaks also used it?

[@robabnawaz]

@@lk42000 They still use it

[@lk42000]

@@robabnawaz Alright, thanks for the information. I'll edit my comment

[@misacraft3714]

My great grandfather was Czech and he used the “german” system like jedna a dvacet, dva a dvacet, tři a dvacet….

[@shriker5969]

When I dictate a number to my collegues I tend to stick to just read the numbers as if they were single digits from left to right. This helps a lot against any confusion, especially with my natively french speaking collegue.

[@whohan779]

I watched an Arte documentary about the "strange mannerisms of counting in German from a French POV" and almost all comments were "How is French counting better?". At least Belgian French uses 'septante', 'huitante' and 'nonante' for all numbers between 70 and the next hundred, but c'mon how is 'quatre-vingt-dix-neuf' 'simpler' than 'neun&neunzig'?

[@shriker5969]

@@whohan779 The french speaking swiss count the same way, so do I. Septante, huitane and nonante is way more convenient.

A tiny thing nice to mention is what was written in the middle of the rotary dial of the first automatic phones in Germany : "Please compose the phone number digit by digit in the order it is written, not pronounced"' (written in German, of course) => to be seen in the Telecommunications museum, at the 1st floor above the Bahnmuseum in Nürnberg !

[@elonmush4793]

It can be very annoying if somebody gives you their phone number but they pronounce it in groups of hundreds or tens. They start with "Hundertfünf-" and you type "105" but they finish with "-undvierzig", so it's 145. Always dictate phone numbers digit by digit!

[@robinshirley8952]

There was this ad for a phone prefix you could use for reduced prices. "Null Zehn DreiZehn" was the slogan. But was it 01013 or 010310? It can be confusing.

[@zaphod333]

@@robinshirley8952 It could, but spoken language gives you a clue: 13 is spoken in one rush with a falling voice "DREIzehn", whereas 3-10 goes more like "drei. zehn." with a tiny break and a melody that is flat or even slightly rising at the end of both words.

[@KiraFriede]

@@elonmush4793 Same goes for customer numbers and order numbers when calling customer service. It's been a pet peeve of mine for quite some time.

[@Cyberwolf1989]

I remembered phone numbers in blocks of two. We had an regional code with 4 Numbers and most phone numbers were 6 digits. To dial the numbers wasn’t a problem in two digit blocks because my german thinking brain would switch them around. If I got phone numbers with 3 digits per block I had a hard time exactly like described above.

[@val1n]

As a German native speaker, I never ever had any problems regarding the numbers. But then I decided to learn and study Japanese. And now, I do have a problem. If I read or speak a lot of Japanese, I find it hard to switch back to the German number system. Interestingly, this doesn't happen to me when speaking more English.

[@BenKerman]

Probably because the Chinese number system uses steps of 10'000, so unlike for European languages where you just have to learn new words (which are often pretty much identical as well, short and long scale differences aside) that represent the exact same values (like thousand⇔Tausend, billion⇔Milliarde, trillion⇔Billion, etc. for English and German) you have to build a whole new mental apparatus for numbers in Chinese/Japanese/Korean since there's no 1:1 Chinese⇔European equivalent between number words beyond 1000. At least that's what I currently struggle with the most when I need to understand Japanese numbers It also definitely doesn't help that you still use the Western-style thousands grouping in Japanese when writing numbers in Indo-Arabic numerals

[@Yotanido]

@@BenKerman Even better: Some Japanese people use groupings of 4, while most use groupings of 3. So you need to be careful not to assume it is 3

[@レジスト]

I experienced the exact same thing while studying Japanese.

[@PagChomp190]

@@BenKerman chinese does have 10.000 which is 万 but yea after that its actually madness to convert from european to chinese

[@BenKerman]

@@PagChomp190 No, CJK languages don't refer to 10'000 in the way European languages do. Have you ever seen 十千? Like you said, there's a dedicated word for it (萬/万) which doesn't exist in Eurolangs, so that's where the confusion starts when learning a language with the Chinese system, which is what I meant when I said they don't have equivalents for numeral words beyond 1000

[@RKH1502]

6:20 It should be pointed out that the old "one-and-twenty" system is still perfectly acceptable in Norwegian, at least in speech. The older you are, the more likely you are to say one-and-twenty than twenty-one.

[@heimdall7774]

Yes, both are very common and used amongst each other in my estimation. I find that people might also use "one and twenty" colloquially and still also use "twenty one" when solving a math equation for example. Using both keeps everyone happy and flexible (making both math and German easier).

[@KaiHenningsen]

@@heimdall7774 And that's probably very close to how I feel about German timekeeping. As a child, I of course learned it as two times counting to twelve (let's ignore the minutes here, that'd get much too confusing). (Also note that there is no equivalent to AM/PM in German.) That system has always given me problems, though, and I was happy when I discovered the 24-hour system, which is the only kind I've ever seen used in any kind of timetables in German, be it trains or TV programs. These are, in fact, used alongside each other. (On the other hand, the German pound - 500 grams - has pretty much completely vanished from the language since I grew up.) Oh, and one oddity. It is fairly common (though not universal) to say phone numbers in pairs, but few people know that this corresponds to an artifact of mechanical dialers in post offices that handled two digits per stage, and consequently, the pairs need to align at the beginning of the number (12 34 56 7), not at the end (1 23 45 67). These are sequentially processed numerical names, not counting numbers - you can't have both 12 and 123 in the same system.

[@candyjaywee]

Same in Czech. Most likely coming from the influence of German during the Habsburg monarchy. Seldomly used nowadays.

[@StinkyCatFarts]

That’s what he said

[@ShiftySqvirrel]

@@heimdall7774 Indeed, I use both systems. Generally using the newer method with larger numbers(not sure where the line is drawn for me though), phone numbers, and in maths.

[@Stefan_Van_pellicom]

Some things to be set straight here ! Both Germans, and us Dutch speakers use not only the Arabic digits, but also our their numberstructure. As you mentioned correctly, they read from right to left, BUT with the exception of the numbers. These are read from left to right, just as we do! 100 is written ١٠٠ and 2.345 is written ٢.٣٤٥. Even more : in Arabic the numbers go like this : 1 wahed, 2 itneyn, 3 talata, 4 arbah, 5 chamsa…. For the multiples of 10, the suffix -een is added. So 30 is talateen, 40 is arbaeen, 50 chamseen. The word “and” is “wa” in Arabic. So you 31 becomes wahed-wa-talateen and 43 is talata-wa-arbaeen, exactly the way we do it!

[@heinzdirk69]

Exactly! This has to be a pinned comment.

[@KlipsenTube]

But how do you say 2.345 in words? Not "fünfundvierzigunddreihundertundzweitausend". It's "zweitausenddreihundertfünfundvierzig".

[@Stefan_Van_pellicom]

@@KlipsenTube In Arabic that would be alfeen tultameya chamsa wa arbaeen, exactly the same as in German (and our Dutch).

[@KlipsenTube]

@@Stefan_Van_pellicom then it's not "right-to-left", but everything from left to right ... except for the last two digits that get switched around.

[@fremejoker]

Can you prove that Arabic had and when Arabic had this influence about Germanic languages to dictate how numbers are said?

[@regenorakel]

When I did my first aid training for my driver's license, I learned that people usually switch to their native language when counting. One of the participants of the course was a French native speaker and so she always counted in French while doing chest compressions on the doll. The fact that English used to count the same way as German became apparent to me when I recently read Pride and Prejudice, which was first published in the early 19th century. Whenever someone's age is mentioned, it's one-and-twenty, for example.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

"four score and seven years",

[@AnonymousSam]

There's a video on the channel "Numberphile" that goes over the French counting system and the speaker said something to the effect of "If you want to know someone's original language see what language they start counting in." That may be one reason why it's so hard to adopt other counting systems when learning a language, while also not being aware of the inconsistencies in our own language.

[@SionTJobbins]

Gwych - diolch! So good to see Welsh get a mention. The 'classic' twenty counting system is Celtic and probably the root for French's twenty's too - as it's probably a Celtic substratum in French. Welsh started switching to the excellent decimal system, as you said, abou 80 years ago as Welsh medium education began to grow. As English had been the only medium of education until then (Welsh was banned) Welsh-speakers, even essentially monolingual ones, would count in English, in the middle of a Welsh sentence for anything much above 10 (it seems many Indians and Africans do this when speaking their own native language from what I can pick up in films and youtube). The decimal system had always been around but the classical was seemed as more, well, classical and was also used in the Bible of 1588. It's no mostly used for saying the time, things like significant birthdays or other occasions but people would never say that there was "dau ar ddeg ar hugain" people at the party, it'd be " In 1865 a group of Welsh people founding a Welsh colony in Patagonia with the intention that everything would be in Welsh - as Welsh was banned from official use in Wales. This means that all schooling, book-keeping, law courts were in Welsh in Patagonia when it was illegal in Wales. The Welsh in Patagonia soon found that the classical counting system was too combersome for maths and so adopted the decimal system. When, at the beginning of the 20th century Welsh people from Wales learnt that children were being taught maths in Welsh they were amazed as many in Wales thought it was impossible to do so in Welsh.

[@LambentIchor]

The same remains in Irish. "an t-aonú lá is fiche", the first day and twenty, or 21st. We also use scór for twenty and so you'll hear 'sé déag is trí scór' for 76; literally 16 and 3 score. I didn't find learning counting in French difficult having learnt this in Irish.

[@linndarkwatch]

@@LambentIchor "Score" is known in English for 20, but rarely used nowadays. It's mostly remembered as the first line of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address "Fourscore and seven years ago...." or when people might be trying to sound archaic.

[@LambentIchor]

@@linndarkwatch I'm aware of that, and used the English word score when translating the Irish number 😁 I don't know when we started using it. It has cognate forms in Swedish and Danish, as well as Iceland and the Danes did found Dublin. Or it could have come in later from English. The original 'fichid' and other dialectal variations exist for counting 20s but scór is used pretty much as in English, down to meaning a notch in a stick.

[@jujutrini8412]

@@linndarkwatch People still say score for a twenty pound note as in “lend us a score?”

[@hurri7720]

@@LambentIchor , not in Swedish but in Danish.

[@Possiblyqiqi]

I just want to point out that despite numbers in Arabic are written smallest to largest, it is read in the exact same way that German is. I don't know if it was historically read from smallest to largest but as far as I'm aware its always been read from greatest to smallest with the exception of tens and ones.

[@thomashintz8609]

Exactly. Arabic text is written right to left but numbers are written left to right. Also you count the numbers like in German, e.g. 25 is chamse ashreen (five twenty).

[@zaphod333]

@@thomashintz8609 Wouldn't it be better suited to say numbers are written least to most significant, or lowest to highest? By that nomenclature numbers and text alike are written right to left, and the reading of numbers naturally matches their writing.

[@thomashintz8609]

@@zaphod333 It might be better suited to say that. But: If you watch an arab write, you will see him write the text from right to left and when he writes down a number, he leaves a blank space approximately the size of the number he wants to write and then actually writes down the number from left to right, meaning highest to lowest.

[@zaphod333]

@@thomashintz8609 Interesting. Could this be a modern development? Is there any knowledge about how it was done in ancient times?

[@ebleyes]

In old Arabic writings they used to say the numbers from smallest to largest.

[@cuongpham6218]

As a Vietnamese speaker, I find both systems contrived, because in Vietnamese, at least in normal speech, numbers are always read only by its digits, so no "-teen" or "-ty" or "hundred" business. For example, the year 1968 would be read as "one-nine-six-eight", pretty simple. Of course there are words for hundred, thousand, etc. and they would be read as such in formal texts (1968 = "one thousand nine hundred sixty eight"), but colloquially, no one would ever do that.

[@galdavonalgerri2101]

I like that way 🙂

[@modmaker7617]

I believe the best system be diget by diget like Vietnamese but I still think we need a suffix for collums. Eleven should be "Onety One". "One One" would sound weird. One Hundred should be "Onecent". "One Zero Zero" would be inefficent.

[@cuongpham6218]

@@modmaker7617 Yeah actually from 11 to 19, the numbers aren't read as "one-one" and so on in Vietnamese, but rather "ten-one", "ten-two", and so on.

[@modmaker7617]

@@cuongpham6218 Interesting.

[@ruedigernassauer]

As in the Vietnamese language anything that doesn´t add information is skipped.

[@flamethrow868]

The title was so confusing to me at first, I couldn't understand how they are backwards. My native tongue is Arabic, in arabic, just like in German, numbers from 21 and up are read as 'small number and twenty/thirty etc" so while I've been speaking english and french (same as in english) since I was a child; the numbers in German seemed very natural to me when I learned them just last year lol As for mental calculations, I don't find any of these languages more comfortable than the other to be honest, maybe because I learnt how to count in french basically at the same time I did arabic, and both of these languages have the same systems as english and German respectively

[@BigBenGermany1983]

They are not reversed! The English ones were flipped through romanization! Count from 13 to 19 in English, and you'll have the Germanic counting system! After twenty, it was romanized in English, for some reason!?

[@kirstenkremer-yq6yc]

But Arabic would continue to read the smallest numbers first, right? German mixes it up for numbers with more than two digits. 234 would be 2 hundred 4 and 3-ty.

[@LisandroLorea]

They are reversed because ١٢٣ in English would be 123 but إسلام is not "malsi". Maybe people thought that keeping the order for the numbers made more sense, as the whole positional system was new, and keeping the order would be less confusing if you learned how to use them for prices and math in an Arab-speaking country.

[@BigBenGermany1983]

@@LisandroLorea No, it happened because of romanization. The Germanic number system follows the logic of its origin in Sanskrit. This was also the case in English before romanization, when English was still a purely Germanic language. It only changed after romanization and followed the Roman logic.

[@FlyingFox86]

It's a bit odd that you describe the Germans as doing something weird following the number 20. But it seems to me that it's the English that are suddenly changing methods. In the teens, they also say the numbers backwards: seventeen, eighteen, nineteen instead of tenseven, teneight, tennine. Edit: oh never mind, you made that same point later on. Edit2: also, it's the same in Dutch as it is in German, which shouldn't be surprising.

[@xrated_]

yes but to be consistent, english should also be i.e. teen-six and not sixteen

[@NomicFin]

Finnish also used to do the "backwards" numbers (and actually still does for 11 - 19, since the numbers literally translate to "1 of 2nd", " 2 of 2nd", etc.), and it was still in use relatively recently too. I own a lot of old books, from 1930s - 50s, thatuse the "backwards" numbers at least for numbers 21 - 29. Yet nowadays nobody does that, and I didn't even know it ever was a thing in Finnish before seeing it used in old books. It should actually be pretty easy to switch the numbering system since it's not like you'd have to redo any signs or anything, and even if people are used to the older way of saying numbers they would probably understand what you mean if you said "einhundred zwanzig und ein" instead of "einhundred einundzwanzig", even if they would consider it grammatically incorrect.

[@la7dfa]

In Norwegian we also did use to switch the numbers in some cases. But nowadays it gets more and more the correct way. I assume we inherited from Danish and them from German and old Norse.

[@cristianseres1353]

I remember that a Finnish Christmas TV program used old Finnish numerals when I was a child. 24 was "neljäkolmatta", "four of the third" which is the same logic still used for numerals 11 to 19 in Finnish. As a side note, Finnish numerals can get incredibly long when conjugated as each part is conjugated separately, "kahdennestakymmenennestäneljännestä", "from 24th", for instance.

[@charlesgrant-skiba5474]

The Germans had many great mathematicians (Kepler, Leibniz, Gauss, Euler, Moebius, Cantor, Jacobi, Weierstass, Kronecker, Riemann, Klein, Hausdorff, Noether, Weyl, and many more) and contributed greatly to the development of this science. As you can see, their way of counting has never been a major problem.

[@martijnb5887]

Or calculating was so notoriously difficult that those few who managed to get fluent, would be likely to become genius.

[@MrThomashorst]

Thats not an argument because there are great mathematicians in france although they count like psychopaths😂

[@nirfz]

Well he did say something like "mental arithmatic", not maths in general if i remember correct. Which if i think would be "Kopfrechnen" in german, and all the mathematicians didn't do their things only in their head but on paper. Calcualting on paper and in your head are quite different. See, i am (in my view) pretty bad in mental arithmatic or "Kopfrechnen", but that didn't prevent me from graduating egnineering school. (Höhere Technische Lehranstalt) This kind of school meant to do math in 10 of 15 subjects for 40 hours a week for 5 years. (age 14-19) Only in subjects like german, english, geography, history and sports we were free from calculating. Anything else included "the works" of a few of the people you mentioned, but also many others like Ohm, Kirchhoff, Fourier, Helmholtz, Taylor, Laplace, Maxwell... but mainly in their practical usecase to calculate anything to do with electricity (->from DC to GHz or electrons in atoms to Radar to put it differently.)

[@charlesgrant-skiba5474]

@@MrThomashorst This is not a counter-argument, because apart from the Germans, there are also Austrians and Swiss (as well as several other scientists living in various European countries, but writing in German and not, for example, in Yiddish). And the French are no exception. In many countries, mathematicians can only count on themselves. Greetings.

[@charlesgrant-skiba5474]

@@martijnb5887 Sounds like some conspiracy theory! Greetings.

[@ronaldderooij1774]

I am Dutch and we use the same system as in Germany. I never experienced anybody having trouble with it. I did notice that my father would write 157 in the order 1 first, the 7 second and the 5 third. I found that weird, but he said that it was the way he learnt it in school in the 1920's.

[@johndododoe1411]

It's highly practical when writing down spoken phone numbers, product numbers etc. on the fly.

[@Nitidus]

​@@johndododoe1411Or people could simply behave reasonably and read out those numbers digit by digit 😉

[@svr5423]

@@johndododoe1411 It's not, because then you have to write the digits out of sequence. So in between, you always have to move the cursor.

[@Timmerdetimmerdetim]

Flemish here,it bothers me sometimes. Cognitively so to speak.

[@CLipka2373]

"Backwards" English numbers were still occasionally used in poetry at last as late as 1971 (e.g. in the lyrics of Jethro Tull's "Mother Goose").

[@BigBenGermany1983]

They are not reversed! The English ones were flipped through romanization! Count from 13 to 19 in English, and you'll have the Germanic counting system! After twenty, it was romanized in English, for some reason!?

[@simonromijn3655]

Dutch adopted the same counting approach as German. I am a Dutch speaker but was born and raised in New Zealand. When I lived and worked in Amsterdam I was confused when people read out telephone numbers two at a time in reverse order. I was used to the English approach of reading out telephone numbers, typically three or four digits at a time in order from left to right. This approach was also adopted by Dutch speakers in New Zealand. I would have to ask speakers in the Netherlands to give me the numbers one digit at a time to avoid making errors.

[@jelmar35]

I am a native Dutch speaker in the Netherlands and I also always get confused by phone numbers. But nobody around me seems to get confused though

[@viktorsmets29]

I'm a Dutch speaker as well (from Flanders) and when I dictate phone numbers I always group them two by two, and sometimes a group of three. Sometimes I read 21 as one-and-twenty, and sometimes as two one, even switching between them while I'm dictating a number. But people understand and that's what masters at the end of the day

[@BigBenGermany1983]

They are not reversed! The English ones were flipped through romanization! Count from 13 to 19 in English, and you'll have the Germanic counting system! After twenty, it was romanized in English, for some reason!?

[@borisviolin633]

So sorry, will remember next time I read you a phone number 🤣

[@Al69BfR]

One can argue, that German numbers stay consistent with those teens, that are, as you mentioned, also backwards in English when you count teen as ten. It should be tenthree, tenfour, tenfive…., shouldn’t it? 😉

[@swedneck]

to be honest i think it's just because it's way easier to say that way

[@OpaSpielt]

French is consequently using the same order for the 10s (from 17 to 19) as for the 20s, dix-sept, vingt-sept (ten seven, twenty seven). While Italian weirdly switches the order in the middle 15 quindici fifteen 16 sedici sixteen 17 diciassette ten and seven 18 diciotto ten eight

[@2adamast]

@@OpaSpielt Just like french seize dix-sept

[@OpaSpielt]

@@2adamast I yesterday saw a video about the way Danish language handles the numbers above 20. And I thought French is crazy with the quatre-vingt-dix for 90. Danish is insane 🙄🙄

[@Caststriker]

​@@swedneck Which is probably the reason because saying Zwanzig-eins doesn't roll off the tongue and makes you just say "Zwanzig, eins" instead of "Zwanzig-eins". And every number like 10, 20, 30 etc. ends with "-ig". As a german I know it's a stupid thing but I don't see an alternative for it if we don't invent new words for the tens.

[@prnzssLuna]

Both ways make sense, and it's perfectly fine to use either one imo. German just happened to adopt the one we have now, but personally, I don't have any issues with it whatsoever. If anything, I more often than not confuse my numbers in English, because I'm more used to my native German way of doing it. My japanese teacher complained about that a week ago or so too lol

[@KwanLowe]

Quite interesting about how we also use similar numbers for the teens (13-19). I never noticed that. But it's not only the spoken representation of the number, as they use different separators for thousands and for decimals. (1.234,56 vs 1,234.56). That's not too hard to get accustomed to. Then I got to a German math textbook and the approach used in German schools for multiplication and addition is very different. In some operations the German methods are a bit easier with practice, but I still fall back to English when under pressure.

[@drankercz]

I think thanks to German, Czech also adapted this backwards counting. But we use the classic way as well. For example: 25 can be read as "dvacet pět" (twenty-five) or "pět a dvacet" (five and twenty) and I think that's cool

[@misteram8348]

I am from Germany and it has actually been a problem for me sometimes, but only in one case: if i try to use an snack automat and i need to type the number in. I always stand in front of it and need to think a second our two in which order i need to press the numbers. Anything like a pin is not a problem, probably because i dont remember them as one big nummer (one thousand two hundred and thirty four ) but just the digits (one two three four ) Ps: not my actual Pin

[@SchmulKrieger]

use ziffern instead

[@misteram8348]

@@SchmulKrieger 1234 and 1 2 3 4

[@SchmulKrieger]

@@misteram8348 yes. We also do that in the warehouse with the numbers, read only the digits, don't form a number with the digits.

[@berndbrotify]

I don't just find it easier to do maths in German (my native language) than English. Even when I just read an English text, I still read the numbers as German (unless they are written out as words). Sometimes that even happened while reading to other people, which led to confusion more than once, when the audience didn't understand German.

[@annabelholland]

I thought that when a number is written as a figure (eg, 10 instead of ten) and the name of the game, company, film, etc is in a foreign language, they would say it in the foreign language. This means in the game euro truck simulator 2, i thought they would say the number 2 as two and not dos, deux, zwei, etc (in their native language). Same with windows 10. And when i read a number in a foreign language, i often read it in english (my native language). Eg, 21 voitures [21 vehicles], I read it as 'twenty one voitures'. Note that i do not know a lot in french, i just know that meaning of voiture and know what 21 is in french.

[@jehib8533]

@@annabelholland It's usually Windows Zehn in Germany, and probably Euro Truck Simulator Zwei (I can't say I've ever heard of that game, though). However, there might be some people who say Windows Ten.

[@BerndFunken]

@@jehib8533 i guess that is because "Windows" is the name of the program and that name is in English. I mean we (try to) say Renault like the French would say and not like it would be a German word. One of the exceptions would be for example Citroen since i can't even write the name correctly with my German keyboard. Most (if not all) Germans call that Zitrön (i think Citroen made even a advertising campaign in which they pictured their cars as citrus fruits xD) so the Citroen 2CV is completely spoken in German (Zitrön Zwei Ce Vau xD).

[@martin22336]

Same here even the multiplication. Its aways one way and then translated to English

[@frofa2954]

@@BerndFunken I have not once heard a fellow (West) German say "Zitrön" for Citroen in the last fifty years.

[@larsiparsii]

Edit: Lol, I didn't even watch the video before commenting. I now see you already mentioned it. 😅 At least I added some context as to why. We used to have it the other way around in Norway as well. Some still say the numbers "backwards", especially those of the older generation. But in 1951 the government introduced the first so far only language reform for spoken language. This aimed at making people say numbers from left to right, so that the switchboard operators and others could more easily write down phone numbers.

[@ingovb6155]

technically, the 'teen' numbers are also backwards in *both* languages: thir-te(e)n / drei-zehn: (3+10) and the same for all other teen numbers. It just misses the 'and' between the tens and ones for the numbers 21+. And that happens when writing a comment before having finished the video :D (you say so in 5:30+)

[@LucaPasini2]

What isn't mentioned in the video is that the same thing is true for romance languages (at least the ones I know): for example 14 is Quattor-dici in Italian, Quatorze in French and Portuguese and Catorce in Spanish.

[@modmaker7617]

@@LucaPasini2 Also in Slavic Languages Polish: jedenaście = jeden (1) + naście (teen) [yes in Polish teenagers are 11-19 not 13-19]

[@TheZappic]

That's exactly the comment I was looking for! So where rewboss says that it's not logical for germans to "switch" to counting "backwards" instead of counting the same way as english speakers do, I see the english speakers switching from "backwards" to "forwards". I mean... why?

[@ABaumstumpf]

German at least is consistent in the strange way numbers are read. It isn't great, but it also isn't bad.

[@LucaPasini2]

@@ABaumstumpf It may be consistent, but for someone who's not used to it it seems really inconvenient: when in Italian you say numbers from 11 to 16 you don't really think about what their name means, it's just a matter of habit. But saying all the other numbers in order seems so reasonable and practical that doing otherwise just seems an unnecessary complication. We see it in the same way us Europeans look at the American way of writing dates, or maybe their use of the Imperial system: they say they're too used to it and too attached to switch, but it seems so unreasonable and overcomplicated.

[@theaviationofficer3899]

As a german myself our 1 and 20 method always confused me a decent amount. Especially when someone tells you to write down a number because for the double digit values we have to start at the back and so on. This got even worse when I started learning english and since I live my life ~30% with english that confusion has really only increased. I have tried and will continue trying to actively use the 20 and 1 method but the results have not been very successful so far.

[@pavelgrulich2989]

In Czech for example, we use both systems, the "twenty one" system is viewed as the most formal one and historically used in the central region of the country, which was more developed and had more popupulation in cities, and the "one&twenty" being used traditionally in the less urban regions (many of them bordering Germany or Austria). I for example use both systems, the "twenty one" for common calculations and names, and the "one&twenty" when regarding prices and age. We also use two systems for numbers between 1100-1900, similarly as in English, we can say for example the number 1543 as either One thousand five hundred fourty three, or Fifteen hundred fourty three. In theory, one could also say One thousand five hundred three and fourty or Fifteen hundred three and fourty, but these two are nowadays considered very odd and archaic. I personaly use the "teen system", since both are formal and the teen is more common in everyday language. But from my own experience, I must say, Slovaks have a harder time understanding these systems, since neither "one&twenty" nor "teen" systems are existent in the Slovak language. For those who don't know, Czech and Slovak are fully mutually inteligible languages. Both language have the normal teens of course (11-19 in this case), with them being number-náct/násť (11 - jedenáct |jeden-náct| / jedenásť |jeden-násť|, 19 - devatenáct |devět-náct| / deväťnásť |deväť-násť|)

[@TheSenator007]

In Dutch the system is the same as the German system. When I learned two-digit numbers as a child, at some point it occurred to me that we wrote them backwards from how we said them. If I remember correctly, I once pointed that out to my mother. She said that's just the way it is and since then I learned all the numbers as they were. Maybe that's why when I learned numbers in different languages, I automatically took the system used in that language as the way that number is in that language. So I didn't think of English as the 'right' way I would have thought of it if I would've learned it earlier, just as the way English is. Interestingly, when I find myself doing calculations, I find myself going to the result quite fast and translating that in the language I want the result in.

[@AleyCZ]

Here I am happy to be Czech. In Czech, we have both of these systems. The normal reading from left to right is official, but the German style always was pretty widely spread unofficially and if somebody uses it in any communication, nobody is surprised. 🙂

[@mtutor5500]

It's not unofficial, it's official. I would even consider it a higher style. (Just like using singular for higher numbers ending with one - such as "dvacet jeden muž" - corresponding to "twenty one man" /"-" left out intentionally/ instead of "twenty-one men".)

[@Pidalin]

@@mtutor5500 I would say it's just an archaism from the past and that "dvacet jeden muž" thing always sounded weird to me, very archaic or something, it's not today modern language.

[@mtutor5500]

@@Pidalin Truth to be said, I do not know, where exactly can I find out, what's an archaic form (rather than an archaic word - that's simply in the official dictionary) but I can say that few dozen years ago (basically until the last grammar book /"Pravidla českého pravopisu"/ came out in early 90s), using plural for 21 - 24 (etc.) was not official yet. So, I consider it higher style, not archaic. (Yet my point was rather in regards to the "German style" being official, not unofficial and the singular was just an extra point for those who don't know it - rather than for you as a native speaker. :) As this is - I'd say - rather less common - and hence possibly more surprising - than the "German style" among the languages I happen to know.)

[@wolfgangthiele9147]

I do recall that when I was a student at elementary school (in Germany), I used to write down numbers starting with the last digit. For instance, when I wrote the number 92, I started with the 2 and then finished with the 9 to the left. It wasn't really a problem, though, but the teacher did notice and I'm assuming that this wasn't too uncommon.

[@sandman0123]

More interesting than I imagined! 😁 Thank you! I moved to an English speaking area many years ago. Even after getting comfortable with the language, for counting and arithmetics in general, I still switched to my first language in my head. Decades later, even the numbers can be in English now, EXCEPT for the multiplication table! It's strictly native language. If you ask me in English what is x * y, I still have to do the translation in my head. In fact, number representations and most of the my mental arithmetics are now not even in language but in a visual/abstract form. It's just easier that way. I suppose, it's probably the same for most bi- or multilingual people...

[@BigBenGermany1983]

They are not reversed! The English ones were flipped through romanization! Count from 13 to 19 in English, and you'll have the Germanic counting system! After twenty, it was romanized in English, for some reason!?

[@derwolf9670]

I think German is consistent: 16 = sechszehn (6 and 10) 26 = sechsundzwanzig ( 6 and 20) English is inconsistent: 16 = sixteen (6 and 10) 26 = twenty-six (20 and 6)

[@troelspeterroland6998]

As other Danes have commented, yes we also have the units before the tens in Danish. In Old Norse both ways were possible, and Danish settled with the same as neighbouring Germany while Swedish went with the tens before the units. Danish also forms the numbers 50, 60, 70, 80 and 90 in a way which is *etymologically* vigesimal (base 20) but contrary to popular belief, Danish numerals are not vigesimal but perfectly decimal: the units only go from 0 to 9 between each ten. Unlike French which renders 74 as 'sixty-fourteen' (vigesimal), Danish says 'four and half-past-three-t[imes-twenty]' (decimal - and way simpler, right?). We don't actually perceive our tens as half and whole twenties in spite of their etymology but their names are indeed very irregular. But when I was in school we also learned the 'Scandinavian' system with regular names for the tens and the tens before the units, because 1) we should be able to write cheques - where numbers were always written out with letters with regular tens and the tens before the units, and 2) we should be able to speak with Swedes and Norwegians. Cheques died out before I grew up, but I still automatically switch to 'regular tens before units' when I hear Swedish or Norwegian around me. Danes may also use them in improvised festivity songs (an important cultural artefact) if it fits better with the rhythm. When I was younger, the 50 Crowns banknotes also used to say 'femti kroner (five-ty Crowns)' instead of 'halvtreds kroner (half-past-two-t[imes-twenty] Crowns)' as they do now. This was never used colloquially, though, but because of the cheques nobody found it strange to see it on the money. I would prefer reverting to it for the sake of Scandinavian unity.

[@wolfgangthiele9147]

When writing checks in German and repeating the amount in words, one would usually write down the digits in individual numbers, for instance 93520 becomes: Neun-Drei-Fünf-Zwei-Null.

[@reinhard8053]

@@wolfgangthiele9147 It's been a long time since I wrote a check (especially a big one), but I wrote it as we say it and not just the numbers. And everytime I saw it written anywhere it was the same. But it is difficult to write with large numbers. You really have to think about it as it is maybe the only time you do that. I don't know any other usage for that.

[@LaVieDeReine86]

Jeg har mange svenske venner. Jeg går ofte fra københavn til malmø. Jeg siger altid femti seksti sytti. du har ret. det må vi ændre for logik og nordiske enhed.

[@se6369]

In Norwegian, you can use both tens or ones first

[@livedandletdie]

The Danes seems to have the worst problem with that, I've met a lot of Danes, who couldn't get 50 60 70 80 90 as femti seksti syvti atti nitti. I don't have any problem switching between, Danish and Swedish, counting though, fyrre, fyrtioett, to og fyrre, fyrtiotre.. Or German, Einhundertzweiunddreizig or 132, because 123 is boring, or einhundertdreiundzwanzig. My dialect of Scanian as well switches the orders of directions, so South East in Swedish is Sydöst, while in Jynge, it's Östrasöndra, and it's one of the few dialects which has kept the ancient Sunthraz for south, or at least been the most reluctant to change into the one everyone else adopted, Süd, which is from Sunthraz but the n was dropped, so Swedish Syd, English South, Danish Sør and German Süd, are all the same word, while Scanian, still to this day uses Söndra and is the only one of the languages which has the n retained. So for me, I'm perfectly fine with changing word orders, counting orders, etc.

[@degeneriert]

I remember being a young boy in school, writing the numbers in the same order I spoke them, so writing down "123" was like I first wrote a 1, left a gap, wrote the 3 and filled the gap with the 2. So, to school child this system might cause inconveniences, but not for adults knowing how to calculate. In the end there is still the "Kommuntativgesetz" which states that 20 plus 1 is equal to 1 plus 20.

[@zero.Identity]

no it doesnt cause inconvenience. thats just a common problems children share that have problems with learning maths in general

[@baritonfelix]

First off, number words are part of the language, not something abstract you can easily change by decree (and in this case, there is not even a political motivation for trying). For myself, I'd say that I have no problem whatsoever using either the English or the German/Dutch system. Writing down numbers from dictation is slightly more complex, perhaps, but proper stress placement makes it easier. However, I tend to memorize PIN codes and phone numbers as a sequence of two-digit figures, e.g. dreizehn-dreiundachtzig-sechsundneunzig, works better for me since there is an element of rhythm. As for sums etc., I believe I do them independently of a particular language, it is more of a visual thing. Some nerds have watches with binary number displays (all ones and zeroes), so I guess you can get used to anything.

[@WilfChadwick]

It's just uneconomical, essentially when typing dictated numbers.

[@Kref3]

I (a German) first realized that the „German“ system was common in English, too, when a few years ago I read the Aubrey/Maturin books, written by Patrick O‘Brian. I of course read them in English. Those books are about the „adventures“ of Captain Jack Aubrey, Royal Navy, and his friend Stephen Maturin (surgeon, physician and several other things) aboard different ships during the Napoleonic wars. And while they have been written within the second half of the 20th century, O‘Brian took great effort go get everything right. Aubrey, a very conservative sailor, almost always said four-and-twenty, Maturin, a much more modern thinking scientist, almost always said twenty-four. I assume that during this period both versions lived happily next to each other. Over the last half year or so I have read Conan Arthur Doyle‘s Sherlock Holms novels. And though playing in the period from 1875 to 1914, here, too, we sometimes read four-and-twenty

[@ceferinocarracedo564]

As I was a student in Germany ages ago, I worked for some months in the Library. Students had to write on a piece of paper the reference number of the book they wanted to get. It happend at least a pair of times every day, that I couldn't find the book on the shelf, then I tried in the "wrong" way: the reference number was, for example, 456, but the required book was not there, then I looked for it as 465 and "Eureka!", there it was!! Obviously the students looked for the books in the register, but they copied it in the wrong way. I definitively support the change into the twenty-one system!

[@SverreMunthe]

I'm Norwegian, born in 1958, several years after we changed, but I still sometimes use the old system. I don't think about it myself, but younger people sometimes tells me I'm saying numbers wrong, since they actually don't understand. For me to say "en og tyve" or "tjue en" is just about my mood I guess. 😆

[@mtutor5500]

I was honestly very intrigued when he has mentioned it in the video. I have learned Norwegian and our teacher has never told us. (While thinking about it out loud - and before having read your comment - I have also figured that it sounds better with "tyve" than "tjue" - would it even be really used with "tjue"? Would you ever say "en og tjue"? - And what do you think about "sju og tyve" or "syv og tjue"? :D Interestingly - our teacher has taught us both numbers /as equivalent, now I know than -yv- ending ones are a bit old-fashioned/ but not "en og tyve" style.)

[@SverreMunthe]

@MTutor You would most likely use tjue in both cases unless in formal speech, or having a very fashionable language. So en-og-tjue would be the “normal” way. As to 27, that would be sju -og-sjue. You have to be old, and Norwegian to not find that amusing I guess. 😜

[@SverreMunthe]

@MTutor Then you have 30. Tredve if the smaller comes first (en-og-tredve), but never the other way, then it’s tretti. Tretti-en. All other are the same both ways.

[@mtutor5500]

@@SverreMunthe Oh, our teacher was picky then, he has taught us tyve and syv (as well as sju and tjue) but not tredve. :D But now - why is it "en og tjue" (while you have said originally "en og tyve") but "only" "en og tredve" (if tredve comes second)? And the "-" is necessary or not? You haven't used it in your first comment ("en og tyve") but here you did ("en-og-tredve"). I am neither old nor Norwegian, I find it fascinating, I love languages. Jeg er faktisk akkurat "syv og tyve" (eller "sju og tjue"? Jeg er forvirret.) + My language uses both ways (still) too (but not two different numbers such as syv and sju).

[@SverreMunthe]

@@mtutor5500 The - was just a way to get around the spell checker, and make it clear that it was a number. Why I used tyve the first time I’m not sure, but as I wrote, it’s more formal. You also have to remember that Norway has 2 official forms of Norwegian, and every valley and ever small place, especially in the north and on the west coast, has it’s own dialect, sometime very hard to understand, even for a Norwegian. I also wonder if sju is from Sweden, and considered a slang word. In Norwegian it’s Sytten (17), but in Swedish it’s Sjutton. You can not say Sjutten in Norwegian, but you can say Søtten (don’t ask, I have no idea).

[@peter53k]

You mentioned the old nursery rhyme with four and twenty blackbirds. Has there been the backward system in England until the early 20th century? I have read rather every novel by Agatha Christie in original English and was surprised that this backward system was used quite a lot in direct speech.

[@Yelsmeh1]

Older generations use it. My mum says five and twenty past (or to) the hour rather than twenty five past or twenty five to.

[@bigaspidistra]

It existed in print advertising too - I've seen a 1930s advert for K4 cigarettes that said they were sold in packs of ten, and four and twenty

[@ABaumstumpf]

"Has there been the backward system in England until the early 20th century" ... yes.... and it is still the only system... 13 - 19 ... it is literally saying 3-10 up to 9-10. Just with 21 the system suddenly changes.

[@goodmebadwizard]

I definitely had (and have) problems with the German numbers. I am a native but somehow I always struggled with that. I am also pretty bad at 'kopfrechnen' (mental arithmetic), mostly because I always need to sort my numbers before I can do the math. I know a few people with similar struggles but I would say most people are fine.

[@nieksalomons]

You got that the other way around. You see it in the list of numbers you had in screen at 1:10. While germans (and Dutch) keep on counting small number first, the english start saying things backwards. Until 20, english is correct, after 20 they flip: thir-teen, four-teen, five-teen and then twenty-one, twenty-three, like I said, backwards.

[@mohammedsalman3397]

3:25: I'm an Arabic speaker and we don't read the numbers from right to left, we read them just like in German. So 21 "Twenty one" would be "one and Twenty" in arabic but 123 "One hundred and twenty three" would be "One hundred and three and twenty"

[@Felix-ve9hs]

Interesting, when I do math I never do it in a "language" - I just do it visually - like imagining the shapes of the numbers instead of their names...

[@optimistischerjunge9926]

Czech language use both systems, you can say "twenty-one" or "one and twenty".

[@soundscape26]

Changing that in German might prove as harder and having Brits completely ditch the imperial measuring system for good. If you are to really bring it forward, then it's indeed something that starts at school. So I assume vierundzwanzig would turn into zwanzigundvier. BTW, this time I really noticed a difference in the sound of the video but it might have to do with you having removed the background music. I quite liked the music, it was a trademark of your videos but sure, experiment and see what works best.

[@HalfEye79]

That reminds me of one odd thing. My grandmother used to use the "und" as a substitute for "plus". That "zwanzigundvier" or "zwanzig und vier" reminded me of this detail. The funny thing is, that the "und" in "vierundzwanzig" never reminded me of that. And I think I never thought of it means to add twenty to four.

[@anaritabarrettosantiago5225]

I learned German in my teens and just found the way numbers are spoken out “different”, never confusing or difficult. Of course, I never had to deal with numbers in German in a professional or work environment. Maybe in those situations it would be confusing for someone whose first language is not German.

[@BigBenGermany1983]

They are not reversed! The English ones were flipped through romanization! Count from 13 to 19 in English, and you'll have the Germanic counting system! After twenty, it was romanized in English, for some reason!?

[@alicemilne1444]

I learnt German in my teens as well. I worked in a German engineering company and I drilled myself in numbers and taught myself to do mental arithmetic in German too. It's second nature now.

[@olleinge]

Vielen Dank für diese äußerst interessante Rewboss-Folge! Ich möchte auf einen Aspekt hinweisen, der vielleicht auch einen Einfluß ausübt, und das ist die Sprechrhythmik. Man tue einmal folgende Übung: Zähle mit leiser Stimme von 21 bis 60 oder so, Hauptsache, es geht über mehrere Zehnerfolgen. Betone dabei möglichst deutlich die Einerstelle (also die normale Wortbetonung beachtend) und zähle so schnell du kannst, bevor es undeutlich wird. Dann tu dasselbe auf Englisch. Du wirst merken: Bei der deutschen Zählung nimmt man dabei vor allem die Einerstelle wahr, die "-undzwanzig" läuft dabei fast wie ein Grundrauschen, eine Art "reminder" im Hintergrund mit. Das ganze fließt leicht dahin. - Nun die englische Übung. Auch wieder die natürliche Betonung, möglichst schnell und rhythmisch, aber noch verständlich. - Man wird feststellen, der Rhythmus ist ein ganz anderer: DA-dit-dit-dit-DA-dit-dit-dit (deutsch) gegenüber dit-dit-DA-dit-dit-DA (englisch). Jetzt wäre die Frage, ob diese Zählrhythmik einen Einfluss auf die Entwicklung hin zu einer der beiden im Urgermanischen offenbar gleichzeitig vorhandenen Zählweisen hatte. Ob also gewissermaßen der "Zahlen-Rap" im Englischen besser zu dessen Betonungsstruktur passt und im Deutschen vielleicht zu wiederum dessen Betonungssystem die andere Variante. Es ist dabei davon auszugehen, dass in früheren Epochen ohne Rechenhilfsmittel tatsächlich mehr gezählt wurde als heute.

[@HotelPapa100]

I know people who write the digits down in the order they are spoken. So for 123 they would write: 1, then 1 3, then 123.

[@NikolausUndRupprecht]

That is how I learned it in elementary school. But you need to space the digits accordingly, so that you can fill in the void.

[@acrylicpouringdeutsch3775]

The hardest part for foreigners seems to be understanding telephone numbers. Because we tend to mix both systems. Try to write down the number: null eins sechs drei siebzehn dreihundertsiebenundsiebzig dreiundvierzig. 😃

[@SchmulKrieger]

not really, because we dont use numbers when it comes to telephone "numbers" but Ziffern. only if we can say 200 and it is followed by 10 we wouldnt say twohundredandten we would say twohundred, ten, thats why the counting system in German and actually this was the case in all Indo-European languages, is much more efficient, because you can tell the difference between a number and a ziffer.

[@marcvolgers8352]

In Dutch (which has the same "backwards" system as in German) I often say the numbers one for one, often grouped in 2 or 3. So for 06-12345678 I'd probably say: nul zes (06), een twee drie (123), vier vijf zes (456), zeven acht (78). But many Dutch also would say something like nul zes (06), honderdrieentwintig (123) , vierhonderdzesenvijftig (456), achtenzeventig (78). But I think that's confusing. If I would write down, I would immediately start writing, but if I hear "achtenzeventig" I would first only hear acht and would write down 8. But then I hear "enzeventig" so I have to wriggle in a 7 before the 8 😁

[@NoZoDE]

@@marcvolgers8352 That's the way we do it as well. I just find it confusing while listening to radio in the car when they say random telephone numbers for some weird thing they're doing like null-achthundert (0800), 3 mal die vier (3 times the four), zweiundachtzig (82) neunhundertfünfunddreißig (935) and they say that in like 0.2 seconds it is so irritating sometimes. (on another note who actually calls these radio stations?)

[@feynstein1004]

Eh.........did you just give out your phone number on a YT comment section? 😂

[@acrylicpouringdeutsch3775]

@@feynstein1004 Er, nope!😀

[@chonnberdosh3834]

Am I the only one not using language for calculations at all? I always picture the numbers as symbols in my head, basically what I would do with pen and paper. I never thought of bringing language into the mix there.

[@Flovus]

For small numbers, it's more a language and memory task for me, but I also imagine symbols for larger numbers. (Math and calculations are part of my job.)

[@Visionary]

Interesting about the origins of this, thanks! As a native German I can confirm that it sometimes is confusing, especially when writing down spoken numbers and when using English a lot as the second language.

[@AizaBoEn]

OMFG ... THANK YOU!!! I was looking for this information for ages! Originally I was curious about the Dutch language - then thought maybe I should learn German and Dutch at the same time due to ressemblance .... and then found your beautiful and brilliant video🤩🥰 I'm over the mon with this info.

[@freadff5141]

I have some questions: - Why do German use the 3 word gender system, why not 2 like French? - Why are they sometimes completely different from French? E.g. Sun: Le soleil (M) & Die Sonne (F) Thanks in advance.

[@nacaclanga1701]

The last question is even more interesting, because I have yet to find a language or mythology, where the sun and the moon have the same gender.

[@freadff5141]

@@nacaclanga1701 really ? Which one ?

[@0LoneTech]

@@nacaclanga1701 Swedish. Both are utrum. And yes, our words have 4 genders, yet modern politics insist we need more.

[@SauceyRedHN]

Here in Norway, older people (40+) tend to use the older system (five and twenty), while younger people use the new system (twenty-five). There are no communication issues, everyone understands both systems, so I definitely think it's possible for the system to change in Germany.

[@baggieboo7944]

I agree😊 althoug my kids sometimes get confused if their grandparents mean 36 og 63 foreksempel . So I think we are not many generations away form thinking the old system is just as wired as English speakers do.

[@SauceyRedHN]

@@baggieboo7944 Jeg synes det gamle systemet er lite intuitivt i forhold til det nye. Det kan hende at det gamle systemet kommer til å bli nesten helt borte i løpet av de neste 20 årene. Det er jo egentlig, for det meste bare folk over 40 som bruker det gamle systemet. I min erfaring så har jeg bare hørt det gamle systemet brukt av foreldrene mine (50+) og eldre lærere på skolen (40+). Jeg er 20 år gammel.

[@baggieboo7944]

Samme erfaring her. Eg e øve 30 å har kun brukt d nye systemet, me foreldre å besteforeldre som bruke d gammla. Som sakt så syns ongane mine nå at gamla systemet e forrvirrande, så eg e enigge I at d forsvinne nok ut av språket når foreldre generasjonen min dør.

[@BigBenGermany1983]

They are not reversed! The English ones were flipped through romanization! Count from 13 to 19 in English, and you'll have the Germanic counting system! After twenty, it was romanized in English, for some reason!?

[@salicus]

I remember that in elementary school some of us wrote the numbers in the order they appear in the spoken word. So when hearing (or thinking) einhundertachtundzwanzig they would write the 1, then leave a space and write the 8, and eventually the 2 between 1 and 8 to make it 128. I found that counter-intuitive in those days, but now I understand the logic behind it.

[@zero.Identity]

thats infact a technique some learn in the "grundschule" when they have problems with calculating in their head and writing down the numbers wrongly. as example, if someone says "zweiundfünfzig" which is 52, they accidentally write down 25. messing up their result ("grundschule" is the first school you go to in germany. its from class 1 - 4, then later you go to 1 of 3 types of schools for the rest depending on your grades)

[@Mosquitobomber1]

I think a good example for such a switch over generations is a recent trend in how people dictate sequences, like phone numbers: I (25) dictate digit by digit, because it means the person on the other end can just write as i dictate without having to do any mental processing, older people on the other hand (my grandparents generation) dictate numbers. so, i would dicate 1-2-3-4-5-6, where as my gradparents would dictate 123-456 (or 12-34-56), which in german means the other person has to remeber at least one digit because the have to wait for the next one before they can write anything down. And even in englisch, this means more spoken syllables and more effort in filtering out the relevant information. This change has ocurred completely organically over just two generations, so a switch from the 1and20 to the 20-1 system is probably entirely possible, and maybe even inevitable. Whether its necessary, idk. But it would make some things more convenient, and i dont see much of a downside

[@kaiserkueche]

4:33 I believe in the stats and it I aknowledge that it can confuse people, but I wanted to nuance by putting my personal experience in. So I'm an Alsatian native speaker and grew up with French at school and almost everywhere outside of my home, so although my mother tongue is Alsatian (an Alemannic dialect) I master French better, especially for math, counting, and complicated stuff I only learnt at school in French. It would be very complicated to do maths in Alsatian or German compared to French and would require much more time. But appart from that, I find some specific "math tasks" easier in Alsatian than in French, precisely because the unit is said before the decimal: add 2 digits number up, and counting in order quickly between 20 and 100. 1. When I add two-digit number, I always firstly add the unit together and buffer it with +1 to the decimal or not, and then I resolve the decimal (that's how i learnt it). In this case, I can speak my buffering unit outlout and simply add the decimal later which is literally the normal way of saying. 　Example: 26+38=? _sechsezwànzich + ààchtedrissich màcht -> sechs + ààcht = _*_vier_*_ (+1decim) [6+8=13] un zwäi + drej (+1) = _*_sechs_*_ [2+3+1=6] -> viere+saachzich_ (vierundsechzig) 64 　Which would be a little less practical in French, so for example when I play boardgame and we need to count the points, I usually count in Alsatian. 2. About counting in order, it's mainly quicker cause I can just ommit saying -undzwanzig -unddreißig between the 1-9 unit so it's quicker. 　Example I would count from 19 to 31 like this: _niinzeh, _*_zwànzich,_*_ äins, zwäi, drej, vier, finnef, sechs, siwwe, ààcht, niin, _*_drissich,_*_ äins_ 　Which again wouldn't work in French cause we first say the decimal But again, It can be more confusing, especially over 100, and in this case, I also tend to prefer French, maybe mostly because I was taught it in French and I'm used to it Last funny thing, when I spent more time speaking Alsatian at home, with friends, or just when I was working in Germany, suddenly when I was about to read a number in English, it happened quite frequently that I would say it inverted, but in a weird way. For example I would read 48 as eightyfour or 27 as seventytwo, because in my head, when I switch to [insert Germanic language] I switch the thing I'm saying first, but since foureighty is really not natural, it's eightyfour that comes out. But the opposite can also happen, for example when I spent time in the UK or listened to a lot of English while not speaking that much Alsatian, then when I speak again and say a big number, I sometimes have to think about it more than usual.

[@Opharg]

As a native German, I switched to the 100 20 2 system, because it helps me visualize simple calculations, minimizing the amount of "Zahlendreher", especially when visualizing 3+ row calculations. I've got some weird looks in school for it when I wasn't yet comfortable switching between both systems, but that rarely happens nowadays.

[@ErickBuildsStuff]

As a native Telugu speaker (South Indian language), we say 10+4 and not 4+10 like English does. As a child i found it hard to understand but eventually grew on it. Coming to Germany, it created more confusion but i grew on it as well in 5 years. I use all 3 languages easily and sometimes do mix up 3 languages when other person is also capable of understanding. I push it up a notch with my brother and use 4 th language Hindi in it as well. All these happen involuntarily and sometimes confuses others. Even a mix of English and German, fascinates my German friends. In my opinion there should be standardised rules like how we have cm and inches. Since I even know Sanskrit as 5th language, i see a lot of common points and differences between each language and i just live with it. I understand most South Indian languages though due to similarity to my native. I never understood French, Chinese and Japanese though. It was complicated af.

[@splendidk]

Yeah, I am a native Telugu speaker too, even for me learning Hindi and Sanskrit numbers was hard and is similar to German numbers. I don't know about French and Chinese but Japanese numbers are very easy, even in Telugu we have special words for 11, 12 and 15 (padakondu, pannendu, padhi-henu) but for Japanese they just say 10+1, 10+2... In Japanese 21 is two-ten-one 321 is three-hundred-two-ten-one

[@splendidk]

Oh, if you mean Japanese counters, yeah that's complicated

[@jensschroder8214]

The English do the same. From 1 to 12, all numbers have their own names. From 13 to 19 are also English numbers backwards. Germans do that from 13 to 99. 19 = nineteen - teennine, neunzehn - zehnneun But in math, I've gotten into the habit of remembering the numbers in strict order. 123 is one-two-three. Eins-Zwo-Drei, nicht einhundert-und-drei-und-zwanzig

[@jensschroder8214]

do the numbers Two and Zwo have anything to do with each other? Zwo is the alternative form for Zwei

[@rewboss]

Originally, "zween" was masculine, "zwo" was feminine and "zwei" was neuter: "zween Männer", "zwo Frauen", "zwei Kinder". Of course the English and German words are related: they go back to the same Proto-Indo-European root "duwo". English also had an alternative form "twain", still used in idioms like "never the twain shall meet".

[@ukspizzaman]

We do this in parts of Norway too, mainly in coastal areas, and very much so in Bergen, where I live.

[@matzefly]

"most languages stuck with the order in which we read the numbers" French: Hold my beer!

[@Serisar]

PIN-Number - Personal Identification Number-Number. Might be worth it to do a video on acronyms.

[@hesspet]

Fix: Personal Identification Notation- Number 🙂🙂 🙂

[@lenahorster5653]

I know people who struggle with this including my self. I remember having to think about how to say a number out loud when for example sharing my results to math problems in class. I still have to concentrate when saying numbers out loud although in my head there value is perfectly clear to me. In school I just pronounced numbers my own way in my head and these days I do calculations and other number related things in English mostly mentally but sometimes out loud as well to the constant puzzlement of my fellow germans. 😂 while German is my native I tend to think in English a lot of the time anyway especially when I’ve been listening to audiobooks reading books in general or watching a lot of Netflix and the like all of which I do predominantly in English But English seams to have become my sort of internal language anyway in which I also dream quite often. Thanks for the video this is indeed a very interesting explanation for this almost life lol struggle of mine.

[@Kasumistern]

I really really want us to change the system and finally be able to say zwanzigeins. It would make everything so much easier. I had problems with our current system as soon as we started to calculate with numbers larger than twenty in school. So basically I struggled with it since 1st grade. My teacher at the time did not understand why I was struggling to calculate with these numbers and neither did I until my mom explained to me that I am saying my numbers wrong............ I said dreiundzwanzig for 32. I am born German btw. And I struggled so hard. We read everything from left to right. Why not numbers? My worst enemy are people who try to dictate their telephone number like this: "dreiundzwanzig sechsundfünfzig hundertvierunddreißig" It's a nightmare.

[@Llortnerof]

We do read them left to right. We just don't say them that way. Otherwise, that really would be Dreiundzwanzig. Though i'd cut anybody saying his number like that off immediately. Pronunce individual digits. Regardless of language, for that matter. On the same note, always repeat them back to acknowledge them.

[@Vyalkuran]

In Romania we have the twenty-one system, however we had denominated our currency in 2005 so that 10000 old romanian lei = 1 new romanian leu, and as you've mentioned towards the end of the video, the way we "say" values really depends on the generation. Kids would use the new system, 1 leu, 5 lei, 10 lei, etc. People like me born into the old system but were young enough when the switch came would use both, however combined rather than separate. I would say 1 leu, 5 lei, 10 lei, however for 100 lei I say "a million", for 500 lei I say "5 million", but for "odd" values like 4775 lei, I'd say 4775.. Old people would usually use the old system, and often they would confuse the actual values, calling 5000 a 5 lei banknote (instead of the actual old 50000 value). However depending on how old they are, they generally use the new values up to the 10 lei threshold, afterwards using the old system (like 500 thousand for a 50 lei banknote) Can we still understand each other? Yes.

[@Kommentierer]

There is actually an organisation called "zwanzigeins", that encourages a straight left-to-right speech. Actually not a totally bad idea, but I think it is similar to modern keyboard layouts: There might be better layouts, but using what you know is easier and does not require re-thinking.

[@Diacrusher]

So I just realized this is causing a problem for me as well. I'm a native German speaker working in IT and everytime a customer or colleague is giving me a number I always struggle writing them down when told the "german way" while getting the numbers one-by-one is way easier, which obviously works like the "english way" of counting.

[@torstenbeutinger3093]

It is pretecualace that in English and German the Numbers between 10 and 20 is speaking in the same way! In German we could say... ZehnEins, ZehnZwei etc. In English should be... TenOne, TenTwo etc. OR In German: Elf, Zwölf, Drölf, Völf, Fülf etc🤪 in English: Eleven, Twelf, Thelf, Foulf, Filf etc. 😂

[@wohlhabendermanager]

I've noticed that in Norway even some younger people still use the old, Danish influenced system. As a learner I find myself using both occasionally: "tjueen" (twenty-one) or "en-og-tyve" (one-and-twenty). It's just important to know that once you get to the thirties, it has to be "trettien" (thirty-one) and so on. Anyway, "Welsh counting is like French but worse" really gave me a good chuckle. I will have to take a look at it. The worst counting system I've encountered so far is Danish, who also base they number system on 20's, but also a lot worse. 50 is halvtredje-sinds-tyve (or "halvtreds" in short), which means "half third times twenty". Half third = 2 1/2 (I guess it's called that because there's a half missing to 3?). Or "2*20+10 (the half)".

[@johndododoe1411]

Yes half three is one half less than 3, so (-½+3) x 20. Sinds means times, but its clearly times scores ("snese"), which just happens to be a sonic friend of sinds-tyve, It certainly helps to learn time of day first, where it goes all the way from half-one (o'clock) to half-twelve (o'clock) for the half hours on the dial, where English goes from half-past-twelve to half-past-eleven for the same times.

[@wohlhabendermanager]

@@johndododoe1411 " It certainly helps to learn time of day first" I never made that connection, but it certainly does help to clear things up. It's the same in German as well. "Half twelve" in German means "11:30" and not "12:30" as it does in English.

[@Bob94390]

No, also for the thirties you can chose: Trettien, enogtretti, or enogtredve. The same is true for the forties: Førtien or enogførti. And so it continues: Femtien og enogfemit, sekstien or enogseksti, syttien/søttien or enogsytti/enogsøtte, åttien or enogåtti, nittien or enognitti. Luckily Norwegians don't use the Danish system, where 51 is "enoghalvtreds", i.e. "one and halfway to sixty on the last 20".

[@wohlhabendermanager]

Oh, I didn't know that. All my learning materials say it only works for the 20's. Anyway, yes the Danish number system is just confusing as hell. See my first post where I laready ranted about it. :P@@Bob94390

[@Halbblutkaiser]

Back in elementary school a class mate of mine really had problems with reading numbers, instead of reading 23 as dreiundzwanzig (twenty-three) he would read it as zweiunddreisig (thirty-two). And he was not dumb, he was able to calculate just fine, but reading those numbers correctly took him a very long time. So in my opinion I would actually like to have a second dual system, so that children don't have to bear the same problems, just because we have a unnecessary complicated way to count

[@IsomerSoma]

Yes its counter-intuitive and impractical. It should be reformed.

[@az09haz]

In the Czech common speech reverse ordering occures too, as German used to have influence on Czech language. But is seldom used during computing.

[@Rabijeel]

Well, the "own Names" goes up to Twelve as we tend to count as "Romans do"; in "Dozens" (duodecim) back then and the "overflow counter" was not 10 rather than 12. Just that mostly, you started with a new Unit when reaching it. Basically, you went to say it is X (Times) dozens when dealing with multiples until reaching the new 12 limit, then using the new Unit of Schok, Gros and Maß. The "Higher Math" went up to twenty as irreegular Unit, called "Zig", basing in a even older Mathsystem used even "before" the Romans (although, it is hard to count that as Math and not just as "Counting") - thus the Irregularity in Language there. The German-French similaritys go back to the Carolingians as the divide between Germans and Franks originating in the split of the Carolingian Dynasty. Yep, we bashed our Heads for 1000 Years because of the quarrel of 2 Siblings with their Dads Heritage. Also, do not forget, Bavaria and Swabia was a good part, even mainly Frankonian in preroman Times, thus the "different feel" when it comes to "Germanness" for the rest of us and Arminius "late" interventions when the Romans attacked - different Tribes. Only as the Romans had eaten through the Frankonians, the Germans stood their Ground and met them. Then, later, the Carolinians "united" both Franks and Germans and the Roman influenced Parts interacted with the non-influenced Parts, Systems mixxing up and get "reinvented" as counter to the Roman Stuff while still subjugated to the "Romans" and base ones might on them via Religion and religious legitimacy of Rule (Holy Roman Empire, not to be confused with the Roman Empire at all). The divide happened between the Franks becomibng French and the Germans... well, stay Germans. We are stubborn Bastards and hold a grudge against the Franks for supporting Rome back then - yes, we look at you, you treacherous Bavarians. Then, the Muslim Incursions happened,finally fortifying thoose as well as bringing the thought of "Science" and stuff - yet, "Germany" kept untouched by that - thus again, no "changes" reached us in addition to the German stubbornnness. And that is why we have such a crude and mixxed up System based on the Language which to understand you have to know the whiole History of every fucking Word - and its changes through Time as well, thus the social and socioeconomic Changes throughout Time. And that is why Kids struggle in "understanding the logic" as well as Foreigners do. A lot of Fun, you see - and that also explains the German Humor and the constant complaining. Fuck my Life 😉

[@omardengel4498]

As a native German speaker, ever since I learned speaking English very well, and got into English math videos, I started having problems with the German numbers :D I don't like that we have them backwards, and I would love for it to change ^^

[@goebelmasse]

Yes, the german numerals are strangly arranged according to the place value of the digits (hard to say in English for a German, I had to think about it and my result looks clumsy), but have a look at the Danish numbers. They are twenty-based too, but weirder than anything I've ever seen, and additionally they use the strange one-and-twenty order. 56 is "seksoghalvtreds", which is a slurred "six and half-three-twenties". Yes, sometimes German is easier than some other languages. 😇 But in practice, nobody thinks about the numerals. Except the poor soul who want to learn a language.

[@pierrefley5000]

The "half three twenties" part is interesting because it works like German clocks where "halb drei" is "halfway [towards] three [o'clock]", i.e. 2:30 or half past two. Similarly, "half three [twenties]" is 2.5 × 20 = 50.

[@MichaelEricMenk]

6:20 Regarding the Norwegian switch, it was forced via the school, but you still hear occasionally people using the "old" system, even switching back and forth. It seams like some people use it to emphasize the number. It sticks out like a sore thumb if you reverse the ordet.

[@Bob94390]

It is not forced. Riksmål still allows the backward system. Many old people still use the backward system, and occasionally also young people.

[@56independent]

1:37 I'm pretty sure that's the Gare D'Orsay, in Paris, once a railway station, now an art museum.

[@Stoggler]

In British English, some people used to say “five and twenty” when telling the time (as in “five and twenty past”). My grandparents’ generation used to say it (born early 20th C.).

[@PC_Simo]

7:00 I mean; certain movies, and Super Bowl, still use the Roman numerals; even, in Modern English.

[@icewindowInfinity]

Native German speaker here. I find that I have problems when "translating" written numbers to spoken ones, as in I read a number and have to say it out loud. I tend to switch the ones and the tens place around. Interestingly it mostly happens with higher value digits, not entirely sure why. For instance, I mean to say "Achtundsiebzig" (eight and seventy, 78) but instead I say "Siebenundachtzig" (seven and eighty, 87). For a while I actually tried saying numbers "forwards", so "Siebzig und Acht" (seventy and eight, 78), but having said numbers "backwards" all my life that was also a bit of mental gymnastics and I eventually stopped. Nowadays I just correct myself when I mess up saying a number, but maybe I should give the speaking-numbers-forwards thing another go.

[@dabooom1296]

Since I tried some calculation tricks to get faster "im Kopfrechnen" I started use the "twenty-one-system" for my own without even knowing that this was a real discussion. I'm going on by using the old/normal system in my daily life but every time I'm using some calculaton methods it's just faster to write the result the way it was calculated: mostly from left to right, digit by digit and without jumping back and forth

[@EmperorNorton2]

I loved this topic, also because it brought back memories - I did my military service with a signal unit, and we participated in Nato maneuvres where the language was obviously English. The addresses of the units we send messages to were essentially long numbers. Not enough sleep, a high-stress environment, and only school English led to the inevitable - numbers got switched around and messages misdirected. Which is why on one nice day, a small French police station ("neutral" traffic control) with just two officers got the orders to "oppose advancing 5th Orange tank division and if possible destroy it" - to which they replied that they'd try their best, but as the sergeant had problems with his back again, they were not too sure they'd manage... That aside, you could also have used Gaelic as an example for a change happening before our eyes - the old system has aspects of both German and French - that is the traditional system uses a vigesimal base like French, with base twenty, and then the German word order : dhà air fhichead (two-and twenty) and dhà dheug air fhichead (two-ten and twenty) The modern system is decimal, and English word order: fichead 's a dhà (twenty-two) and trithead 's a dhà (thirty-two) Both systems coexist at the moment, but the new decimal system is likely to replace the older one over time. There are a couple of other unusual features in Gaelic - separate rules for numbers when applied to humans, and also some differences when counting sheep. And when counting things, the numbers are split: tri cait deug, literally three cats ten, is thirteen cats

[@EsperantoVarietyShow]

I was WAITING for the part when you explained that the "teens" are backwards. I teach Esperanto (yes, really) and it's fairly common for my English speakers to get mixed up between "ses dek" and "dekses" -- for example -- one is 16 and one is 60. I think they're literally translating in their heads saying "six - teen" -- but in Esperanto, you say it the "normal way" and not the "backwards way" that you do in English and German. - dek ses = ten six = 16 - sesdek = six tens[s] = 60. 123 456 = cent dudek tri mil kvarcent kvindek ses

[@jand.4737]

Working at a german hotel, we often use the decimal system you mentioned. When naming roomnubers in particular we say "three-two-five" (325, in german "drei-zwei-fünf"). Easier to work with

[@hassegreiner9675]

When I stay at German hotels I take great effort in stating my room number in German,eg Zweihundertfünfundzwanzig just for practice - native Danish speaker.

[@FoxGoalie]

This hits very close to home. I grew up bilingual (in Germany) and from a young age until today I have to completely focus on numbers in German when I speak them out loudly. Recently I had to announce jersey numbers at a hockey game in front of 3000 people from low to high and I messed up as soon as I got too comfortable. 😅 Also happens when speaking about prices or how much people owe me, which brings some laughs sometimes. Funnily enough me problem starts in the Thirties. The twenties are mostly fine.

[@CTRLerSupport]

I always wondered about this. Thanks!

[@eyewaves...]

Cool explanations !!! Makes sense... Loved your switch to teens - never thought of that... Thumbs up...

[@RobiBue]

There are several interesting points in this video! First off, I would like to say that I am a “western” polyglot, meaning I speak several “western” languages. At 5:15 my natural way is as follows: if I have to say a result in one language, I have to do the calculations in one of the other languages. Always. I have found out that my brain works better by concentrating in a different language than the one I am currently speaking. As for some other interesting parts, 13 through 19 in English is exactly the Indo-Arabic way like German (thirteen _three ten_ , fourteen _four ten_ , and so on) of course, English and German are distantly related, ergo those similarities. Roman numerals, on the other hand, must be arranged according to certain rules where the smaller “values” to the left of their larger neighbors get subtracted as in XIX is 19 even though XI is 11 because the second X at the end becomes IX which is 9 so XIX is X+IX (10+9 or ten plus one less than ten)

[@Lightning_Lance]

I'm Dutch. We also read numbers the way Germans do. And I definitely find it easier to do maths in English. In fact, the English way is so much more natural to me that I find myself having to kind of "translate" it to Dutch when I'm reading numbers out loud (i.e. remind myself how to read it in Dutch). That probably sounds more dramatic than it really is, it's just something I notice that take a mili second to do that no one else would notice when I'm doing it. Still, it is annoying, and switching to the English system would be better imo. If it's worth the confusion after switching until everyone gets on board, that's hard to say though. Probably not. It's also a bit counter untuitive when you're writing numbers down. Do you write them from left to right, or do you write them as spoken: left, right, middle? But if we started from the units and went UP to the right, that would be a much better system than anything else. Unfortunately, I don't think that will ever happen anymore, it's too ingrained.

[@BigBenGermany1983]

They are not reversed! The English ones were flipped through romanization! Count from 13 to 19 in English, and you'll have the Germanic counting system! After twenty, it was romanized in English, for some reason!?

[@jaapweel1]

dutch does exactly the same and we didn’t have luther but i think the statenvertaling has it that way too. 🤷‍♀️ btw, i have seen some dutch people write numbers down in the order they say them, like when writing 21, they would write the 1 first, leaving a little space to its left, and then fill in that space with a 2. i was never taught this in dutch school but i have to imagine some ppl must’ve found it reduced their rate of accidental number switching

[@BorisZech]

In Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe from 1719 it reads "and it had lain two or three and twenty years there". Which is actually shorter than "and it had lain twenty two or twenty three years there".

[@Qubit.]

As a native-tongue I have to say that you really nailed the pronounciation!

[@CalumCarlyle]

3:15 - oh oh! Not really. The Indian system which this system actually comes from (which you mentioned) actually does write from let to right, so it is actually "backwards" in Arabic. Even then, you could actually make a case for it not being backwards at all, whichever way you read it, so long as everybody is clear on which one is the units, the tens etc.