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ZookeepergameOwn1726 t1_ix40aqi wrote

That has not always been the case. You might have seen videos mocking French because instead of 97 ("ninety-seven") they say four-twenty-and-seventeen. That's a leftover of a time when people counted in base 20 instead of base 10.

The Georgian language functions the same way. 74 is pronounced as "three-twenty-and-fourteen", 51 as "two-twenty-and-eleven".

Over time though, base ten has "won" as humans tend to count of their fingers and we have ten of those. Counting with your toes can't have been practical

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BillWoods6 t1_ix4uw5b wrote

> Over time though, base ten has "won" as humans tend to count of their fingers and we have ten of those. Counting with your toes can't have been practical

So the change came when we invented shoes?

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lemoinem t1_ix480eh wrote

> instead of 97 ("ninety-seven") they say four-twenty-and-seventeen.

Sorry, the french say 97, like the rest of the world. It's not that they don't have a word for 97. They don't write 4-20-17 instead of 97. And if you think French doesn't have a word for 97, then English doesn't either, since it's ninety seven, 90, 7. Beyond twenty (arguably, twelve), only the single digit multiples of 10s and powers of 10s beyond that have their own name in English.

So, yeah, the French say 97, it's just that the words they use can be transliterated to four twenty ten seven (also, if you want to mock a foreign language, get it right, if you think 97 should be split because of the way it is pronounced, 17 definitely should as well).

And English used base 20 as well in the past for it's number naming, see "four scores and seven years ago", that "scores", guess what, that means 20...

But none of these examples are really relevant to OP's question.

Ancient Babylonian system using a base-60 system, or hours on a clocks, using base 12 or 24 are probably better example. Because ultimately, the way a language names it's numbers is not really the same as to which base they're actually using when representing numbers.

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ZookeepergameOwn1726 t1_ix496hy wrote

French is my native language. I am Belgian, we say 97 as "nonante-sept" literally "ninety-seven" while the French say "four-twenty-seventeen". They do write "quatre-vingt-dix-sept" , literally "four-twenty-ten-seven". French-speaking Swiss don't use "quatre-vingt" (80) at all and use "octante" instead.

"Quatre-vingt" (80) ethymology comes from celtic culture which was in base 20. It's a relevant example. Of course the French don't think "4x20+10+7" when they say "quatre-vingt-dix-sept". They think "quatre-vingt-dix" = 90 + 7 "sept". My point was that those languages reflects the fact that it's not obvious or natural for humans to count in base ten, it's a cultural concensus that took a long time to appear. Of course nowadays, the French and the Georgians count in base ten like everyone else. That is not the point I was making.

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