# numbers in English



## Marcel (Sep 29, 2014)

Okay, maybe a strange question but my curiosity got triggered.

I always learned at highschool that in English numbers are like in French, 25 is twenty-five, like vingt-cinq in French. This is unlike germanic languages, where the minor number is placed before the 10-numbers, like the Duch vijf-en-twintig or the German funf-und-zwanzig.

Recently I got all Sherlock Holmes stories in a reprinted version of the Strand magazine. So the text is the un-edited original. To my surprise Sir Arthur Conan Doyle uses the numbers in a Germanic way, like "five and twenty", "two and thirty" and so on. 

I was just wondering if this was part of any type of English, maybe spoken in London? Or were the rules different a 100 years ago and has English evolved being more French-like when counting numbers?


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## buffnut453 (Sep 29, 2014)

Could be a reference to currency. Before decimalisation in 1971, prices were quoted in Pounds Sterling, Shillings and Pence. Thus "two and six" was shorthand for "two shillings and sixpence". Dunno if that's the context of usage in the Conan Doyle piece but it is one possible explanation. 

There is one other possible alternative explanation. There was a period when stating numbers in the Germanic style was considered correct in certain higher-class echelons of society. If you've ever seen "Pride and Prejudice" you'll hear Elizabeth Bennett stating that she is "not yet one and twenty" (referring to her age). 

Dunno if either of these help...if not, sorry for boring you and wasting your time (particularly for introducing such chick flickery as "Pride and Prejudice" onto this forum)!


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## Marcel (Sep 29, 2014)

Thanks. Well, it does help. I think your second explanation does fit. In the Sherlock Holmes stories, these numbers are usually used when describing the age of a person. I never saw "Pride and Predudice" as I had to read that particular book for my English class, never got through it as I disliked it intensely and used the summary instead .

But when was that period? Is that the Victorian age ore more recent?


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## rochie (Sep 29, 2014)

it is also present in the nursery rhyme sing a song of sixpence.

Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds, Baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, The birds began to sing; Wasn't that a dainty dish, To set before the king?

supposed to be from the 1700's


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## vikingBerserker (Sep 29, 2014)

Interesting I have really never noticed this. It is interesting that we say sixteen for 16, but twenty-six for 26.


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## GrauGeist (Sep 29, 2014)

The English language is a composite language that borrows heavily on ancient Germanic and Latin origins. You'll find that Old English did carry alot of the Germanic traits, such as counting by placing the minor number ahead of the decades (tens, twenties, fifties, etc.)

English has evolved over the years, but so too, has German. When I was a "kinder", my Great Aunt Hanke still spoke Prussian in her household. Years later, I took German in school, because I thought I knew enough "German" that class would be a breeze. Well, that sure didn't work out. The Teacher thought I was being a troublemaker because I spoke with an accent (thinking I already knew German) and my terrible syntax so she failed me without really giving me a chance.


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## Njaco (Sep 29, 2014)

I have heard it explained like buffnut stated.


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## Totalize (Sep 29, 2014)

I would essentially agree with GrauGeist. I did not study very much of English history in University but the language is rooted in the history of the land called England and its original peoples. As I understand the Welsh were some of the first inhabitants of the area but we're in turn displaced westward by the Roman Empire. After the fall of the Roman Empire Germanic tribes primarily the Angels and Saxons settled the area. We get the name England from the old Angeland land of the Angels (pronounced angle ). In England you have areas called Wesex, Essex etc from the old English west saxony, east saxony etc. the Germanic language was predominant here and developed and changed to include many French words as a result of the Norman invasion and conquer of England in 1066 AD. In Norman times the High court in England spoke French not Angelish. EventuAlly when French rule died off the language continued to develop until it's present form. I am sure some of our English friends could provide more accurate info but this how I essentially see how the language developed. Centre is how it is spelled. Yes it's spelling is rooted in French as is colour but it is how these words are properly spelled...in English.


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## Marcel (Sep 30, 2014)

rochie said:


> it is also present in the nursery rhyme sing a song of sixpence.
> 
> Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds, Baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, The birds began to sing; Wasn't that a dainty dish, To set before the king?
> 
> supposed to be from the 1700's


Interesting, I just noticed that Conan Doyle uses numbers differently. With the age he uses the Germanic form ( "My wife was five-and twenty when we married" ) while with numbers he uses the normal way ( "all twenty-seven of us" ). Apparently the use of the Germanic way was already wearing off in the late 19'th century. 
I did an experiment with Google translate. Translating "twenty-five" to french gives "vingt-cinq" as one would expect. But typing "five-and-twenty" is translated by google to "vingt-cinq ans", indicating that this form is only used for the age of someone or something.


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## GrauGeist (Sep 30, 2014)

It appears that pronouncing a series of numbers changed to the way we know it around the 18th and 19th centuries, but the archaic method of pronouncing numbers in reference to age continued on through the Victorian era. That was most likely a "vanity" thing as the Victorian era produced quite a bit of romanticism.


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## parsifal (Sep 30, 2014)

saying numbers backwards like conan doyle was a bit fashionable in the early parts of the 20th century. Has its roots going way back to middle English at least, possibly even old English, but the terminaology had a bit of a revival in recent history. thankfully the quirk has died away more recently. 

Old Norse used a counting system not based on tens, but on dozens and multiples of the divisors of twelve (e.g. 60 = "Schock" in German). "364 days" in Old Norse is fiora dagar ens fiortha hundraths "four days into the fourth hundred (= 120)". (Please note that "hundred" once meant 120.) I don't claim to understand the logic behind "einundzwanzig", but the question might be to understand the thinking behind numerals and find out about historic counting systems, not about reading direction.

In Old English, a language descended from Germanic dialects,(with Latin, Frankish and Celtic inputs as well), numerals where "backwards", too: fēowertīene "four-teen", ān and twentiġ "one and twenty" etc., and you can still find remnants of an old vigesimal (base 20) counting system, e.g. "score" for 20.

There are many more languages that speak or read (some of) their numbers "backwards", among them Greek, Latin (both directions possible), Celtic languages etc., and of course languages that actually read right to left like Arabic, where our written numbers come from. The question could be rephrased as: Why does English read their numbers in the wrong direction? Because obviously the "backwards" way is older and may even be more widespread... 

Our current number symbols were brought into Western culture from India, via Arabia. They reached Italy in 1200, Germany in 1500. In the 1500s, when the first books on mathematics appeared in German, there was some argument among scholars, if the number names should be adapted to the direction of writing and reading. Luther, whose Bible translation was the basis for the creation of a common German language (prior to Luther, there was no High German only a number of mutually hard to understand German dialects), decided to retain the traditional number names (i.e. "backwards"), contrary to other authors who proposed "zwanzigeins", in accordance with the writing direction of the new numbers.


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## N4521U (Sep 30, 2014)

In NZ its "one bro, two bro" etc.

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## Wildcat (Sep 30, 2014)




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## pbehn (Sep 30, 2014)

Marcel said:


> Okay, maybe a strange question but my curiosity got triggered.
> 
> I always learned at highschool that in English numbers are like in French, 25 is twenty-five, like vingt-cinq in French. This is unlike germanic languages, where the minor number is placed before the 10-numbers, like the Duch vijf-en-twintig or the German funf-und-zwanzig.
> 
> ...



Marcel

My Grandmother spoke Yorkshire dialect and she would use "five and twenty to" and "five and twenty past" when telling the time, she would also say "three score and ten" instead of seventy, a "score" was an old word for twenty. this is similar to the French quatre vingt dix, in this however she was quoting the Bible. Yorkshire dialect is similar to plat Deutsch in some ways in the words and the grammar used. This and many other dialects are dying out but I am sure in Conan Doyle's time such expressions were more common.


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## Airframes (Sep 30, 2014)

Also note, as mentioned, the 'teen' numbers, such as sixteen (16). It's an abbreviation of 'six and ten', another development of the language, similar to other abbreviations, such as 'can't', for can not, 'isn't it' for is is not, etc etc.


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## Siddley (Sep 30, 2014)

pbehn said:


> My Grandmother spoke Yorkshire dialect and she would use "five and twenty to" and "five and twenty past" when telling the time, she would also say "three score and ten" instead of seventy, a "score" was an old word for twenty. this is similar to the French quatre vingt dix, in this however she was quoting the Bible.



Exactly the same as mine then ! - except my Gran used North Derbyshire dialect


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## Marcel (Sep 30, 2014)

pbehn said:


> Marcel
> 
> My Grandmother spoke Yorkshire dialect and she would use "five and twenty to" and "five and twenty past" when telling the time, she would also say "three score and ten" instead of seventy, a "score" was an old word for twenty. this is similar to the French quatre vingt dix, in this however she was quoting the Bible. Yorkshire dialect is similar to plat Deutsch in some ways in the words and the grammar used. This and many other dialects are dying out but I am sure in Conan Doyle's time such expressions were more common.



Sounds like your grandmother and I would understand eachother perfectly. My childtime language was Gronings, a dutch version of Plat Deutch. We did not even notice when crossing the border. The language in Ost Friesland was exactly the same. 

So it could be that some of these dialects played a role in the London language, as the Holmes stories alll take place in London? Yorkshire is quite some distance away, I believe?



Airframes said:


> Also note, as mentioned, the 'teen' numbers, such as sixteen (16). It's an abbreviation of 'six and ten', another development of the language, similar to other abbreviations, such as 'can't', for can not, 'isn't it' for is is not, etc etc.


It's actually similar to Germanic languages. "Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fiveteen, sixteen" is in Dutch: "tien, elf, twaalf, dertien, veertien, vijftien, zestien", very similar.


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## mikewint (Sep 30, 2014)

In German 11 (eleven) and 12 (twelve) have their own underived name ELF and ZWOLF not einzehn and zweizehn as the teen numbers might suggest: DREIZEHN (13)
The multiples of ten like 20, 30, 40, etc. make use of a derived single number and "ZIG". thus ZWANZIG (20) and VIERZIG (40) the exception is 30: DREIßig
In the older Latin 1-10 have individual names. The combined forms start with 11 UNDECIM this continues to 17 SEPTENDECIM. At 18 the Romans (literate ones anyway) changed to subtraction 18 DUODEVIGINTI where VIGINTI is 20 thus literally 2 taken from 20 and UNDEVIGINTI or 1 from 20. After 20 the numbers reverse and we have VIGINTI UNO 20 plus 1 VIGINTI DUO 20 plus 2. 
As to the term SCORE as the "Four Score and Seven years ago" (87 years) or "Three Score and Ten" (70) from the Bible meaning 20. This stems from the ancient practice of counting sheep in lots of 20 and keeping count by cutting notches (scoring) a tally stick


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## A4K (Sep 30, 2014)

N4521U said:


> In NZ its "one bro, two bro" etc.



That's right, eh bro!


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## gumbyk (Sep 30, 2014)

Nah, cuz...


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## N4521U (Sep 30, 2014)

I have to tell yous the story behind One Bro...

Annie teaches third grade. One of her tricks to get the classmates to appreciate one another is to ocassionally do language things with them. Many different cultures in her classes and will have them refer to a chair, for instance, in Chinese. A book in Tongan, a door in Japanese, you get the drift.

One day Annie had several count in their First language from home. Yep, there was a little Maori boy, One Bro, Two Bro.... it was soooooo funny. Annie loves her kids......

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## pbehn (Sep 30, 2014)

Marcel said:


> Sounds like your grandmother and I would understand eachother perfectly. My childtime language was Gronings, a dutch version of Plat Deutch. We did not even notice when crossing the border. The language in Ost Friesland was exactly the same.
> 
> So it could be that some of these dialects played a role in the London language, as the Holmes stories alll take place in London? Yorkshire is quite some distance away, I believe?
> 
> ...



Marcel. I have a good German friend who was born an lived until his twenties 10Km from the border with The Netherlands when he speaks his plat he sounds like a Dutchman speaking the wrong words, it sounds Dutch but isnt. Plat isn't a language as such but a huge family of dialects which change from village to village. In lower Saxony where I worked some words or pronunciations identified people as from a particular town or village. Hoch Deutsch is the standardised language and is a little more uniform across Germany but that doesn't mean I understand a word of what a guy from Bayern says. Don't misunderstand what I say, my Grandmother spoke a dialect with strong Plat influence, but it was English, just a little comical to those who didn't understand it. In Lower Saxony when the old boys and their ladies are chatting in plat at a distance, close enough to hear but not close enough to understand the words they sound just like my gran and her mates did. She would habitually put a verb at the end of a sentence and when that verb was "doubt" it didn't mean doubt it meant "that is what I truly believe".

English is a mix, there is a strong Germanic influence, English is officially a Germanic language and the Brits are referred to as "Anglo Saxons" for a good reason, however there are other influences even in numbers. First place is first and clearly comes from the German erste but second clearly comes from the Italian secundo. Yorkshire is about 300km from London but the Germanic roots to English cover the whole of the UK and Ireland it is perhaps stronger in Scotland than in England. Laughably the slang name for a hard on is the same in Ireland as Germany (latt?). Konan Doyle wrote most of his Sherlock Holmes works before 1914, it would be interesting to see if his use of such profoundly Germanic words/syntax stopped when the war started.


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## gumbyk (Sep 30, 2014)

pbehn said:


> Marcel. I have a good German friend who was born an lived until his twenties 10Km from the border with The Netherlands when he speaks his plat he sounds like a Dutchman speaking the wrong words, it sounds Dutch but isnt. Plat isn't a language as such but a huge family of dialects which change from village to village. In lower Saxony where I worked some words or pronunciations identified people as from a particular town or village. Hoch Deutsch is the standardised language and is a little more uniform across Germany but that doesn't mean I understand a word of what a guy from Bayern says. Don't misunderstand what I say, my Grandmother spoke a dialect with strong Plat influence, but it was English, just a little comical to those who didn't understand it. In Lower Saxony when the old boys and their ladies are chatting in plat at a distance, close enough to hear but not close enough to understand the words they sound just like my gran and her mates did. She would habitually put a verb at the end of a sentence and when that verb was "doubt" it didn't mean doubt it meant "that is what I truly believe".
> 
> English is a mix, there is a strong Germanic influence, English is officially a Germanic language and the Brits are referred to as "Anglo Saxons" for a good reason, however there are other influences even in numbers. First place is first and clearly comes from the German erste but second clearly comes from the Italian secundo. Yorkshire is about 300km from London but the Germanic roots to English cover the whole of the UK and Ireland it is perhaps stronger in Scotland than in England. Laughably the slang name for a hard on is the same in Ireland as Germany (latt?). Konan Doyle wrote most of his Sherlock Holmes works before 1914, it would be interesting to see if his use of such profoundly Germanic words/syntax stopped when the war started.



Sounds a lot like pidgin english. In PNG some dialects frequently finished with tru, as in emphasising what they said was true. It was weird to listen to, because all of the sounds were familiar, you thought you should be able to understand it, but it was very difficult to, unless they spoke very slowly.


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## Marcel (Oct 1, 2014)

pbehn said:


> Marcel. I have a good German friend who was born an lived until his twenties 10Km from the border with The Netherlands when he speaks his plat he sounds like a Dutchman speaking the wrong words, it sounds Dutch but isnt. Plat isn't a language as such but a huge family of dialects which change from village to village. In lower Saxony where I worked some words or pronunciations identified people as from a particular town or village. Hoch Deutsch is the standardised language and is a little more uniform across Germany but that doesn't mean I understand a word of what a guy from Bayern says. Don't misunderstand what I say, my Grandmother spoke a dialect with strong Plat influence, but it was English, just a little comical to those who didn't understand it. In Lower Saxony when the old boys and their ladies are chatting in plat at a distance, close enough to hear but not close enough to understand the words they sound just like my gran and her mates did. She would habitually put a verb at the end of a sentence and when that verb was "doubt" it didn't mean doubt it meant "that is what I truly believe".
> 
> English is a mix, there is a strong Germanic influence, English is officially a Germanic language and the Brits are referred to as "Anglo Saxons" for a good reason, however there are other influences even in numbers. First place is first and clearly comes from the German erste but second clearly comes from the Italian secundo. Yorkshire is about 300km from London but the Germanic roots to English cover the whole of the UK and Ireland it is perhaps stronger in Scotland than in England. Laughably the slang name for a hard on is the same in Ireland as Germany (latt?). Konan Doyle wrote most of his Sherlock Holmes works before 1914, it would be interesting to see if his use of such profoundly Germanic words/syntax stopped when the war started.


Hmm, we'll see when I reach the end of the series 

Gronings and the Ost Frisian language are actually saxon-languages. We have a couple of those dialects here in the Netherlands, while Dutch and German are considered Germanic languages. Gronings seems to be more similar to English than German, although the strong Dutch influence must have levelled that by now. But I noticed that understanding both German and English come quite naturally to me, I guess the German comes from the similarity with Dutch.


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## mikewint (Oct 1, 2014)

Animals as well as humans have a "Number Sense" which is the ability to detect a reduction within a group. This is NOT the same as the ability to count. A bird with two eggs in a nest will abandon the nest if you take one egg. A bird with three Eggs will abandon the nest if one is taken but a bird with four will not if only one is taken.
Crows seem to have a very well developed number sense: A squire wanted to trap a crow that lived in his watchtower. Each time he came over with a trap, though, the crow flew into a nearby tall tree, and returned to the watchtower when the squire left. The squire decided to trick the crow by bringing along a friend, leaving that friend hidden inside the base of the watchtower. The crow, however, wasn’t tricked. The crow remained in the tree until the friend grew weary and left. The next day, the squire tried with two friends (one remaining in the tower). No fooling that crow. The next day, three friends. The crow was still not fooled. It wasn’t until the squire brought five friends that the crow was tricked, flying back to the tower while the person holding the trap was still hidden in the tower. 
One would think that humans would have a very well developed "Number Sense" but studies have shown that humans have trouble around the same number i.e. Four.
Children who have not learned to count (under 3yo) have difficulties with groups greater than 2 or 3 objects and apparently see a group of 5 as being the same as group of 4. Studies of primitive human tribes show that many only have words for 1 and 2. Anything above 2 is simply "many". Some tribes had words for 1,2,3, and 4 while above 4 became a "handful" and was often applied to groups of 6-12 objects.

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## Marcel (Oct 1, 2014)

Sometimes it's hard to predict your next post, Mike


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## razor1uk (Oct 1, 2014)

Marcel said:


> Hmm, we'll see when I reach the end of the series
> ....But I noticed that understanding both German and English come quite naturally to me, I guess the German comes from the similarity with Dutch.



My step father is Danish, and growing up during the 40's, before later moving the the US in te late 50's and back to Europe in the 80's; anyway, he is fluent in Danish Swedish, German, English, and good enough in French Italian and Spanish too, (so he says) but he can read about up to 5 -70% of Dutch, due to its mix of words, meanings and rules of language he knows from his fluent Danish, German and English knowledge. Its only everyday sayings and colloqualisms and modern expressions and shortened compounds that he can't fathom.


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## mikewint (Oct 1, 2014)

Got to keep you guys on your toes!! I personally have always found numbers facinating and intuitively obvious. Equaly facinating is number history: from the Babylonians and their base 60 numbering system, to the Mayans and their base 20 (theory is that they did not wear shoes and so could use fingers and toes) except for the third place which was power 18. Roman numerals (can you imagine adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing). Chinese sticks laid on a table. Egyptian hieroglyphics, a staff is one a heel bone is 10 (ten toes?), a coil of rope 100. Facinating


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## pbehn (Oct 2, 2014)

Also Marcel even today numbers are spoken in the German way for effect as in the poem "Four and twenty virgins came down from Inverness, when the ball was over there were four and twenty less"


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## mikewint (Oct 2, 2014)

Sounds plagiarized: 
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.


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## ARTESH (Sep 25, 2017)

Numbers 11 to 19 in Persian:

YAAZDAH: 11 

it is shortened for YEK AZ DAH, which means 1 after 10.

DAVAAZDAH: 12

it means 2 after 10.

SIZDAH : 13 

3 after 10

And so on ...


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## Robert Porter (Sep 25, 2017)

Totalize said:


> Centre is how it is spelled. Yes it's spelling is rooted in French as is colour but it is how these words are properly spelled...in English.


Yes... and no... most major dictionaries allow for both spellings, color and colour, as well as Center and Centre. The language is still evolving and even French is although the government spends a great deal of time and money trying to prevent that. Depending on whom you ask neither, or both spellings are correct. 

Language is such a tricky thing to deal with in so many ways. As an American raised in New England, rural Connecticut, married to an English woman from Hertfordshire. I can truly attest to the old saying "Two countries separated by the same language". Indeed when I first met her family the most common remark was that I spoke using outdated and disused words. Only example that came to mind was our use of linen closet to describe where we kept bedsheets and so forth. 

But over time we each began using the others vocabulary for some things, and our boys often hyphenated terms such as tap-faucet to describe the knob you turn on the sink to turn water flow on or off. What made it even more interesting was my brother-in-law was married to a Scotts woman. The first year I knew them I had to have him translate for me.


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## fubar57 (Sep 27, 2017)

My laptop is set to English English so color and other words that should end with "our" always come up as errors

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## mikewint (Sep 27, 2017)

Yea them Britishers think they invented the blimey language:
TYRE, AEROPLANE, CHEQUE, THEATRE, GREY, PYJAMAS, PROGRAMME, APOLOGISE

Then all the -OUR words: PARLOUR, COLOUR, HONOUR...

Took a long time to figure out: TREACLE, COURGETTE, AUBERGINE, RUNNER BEAN

Then who knew that the FIRST FLOOR was actually UP one flight of stairs

Let's see, CHANGE THE NAPPY AND GIVE THE BABY A DUMMY.

AFTER LEAVING THE PUB JAN WAS PISSED. Thought he was angry.

I heard a man say: LET ME HAVE A BUTCHERS AT YOUR SPOTTED DICK. Figured a knife was going to cure a social disease.

Happened to be in a QUEUE when a lady turned to me and asked if I had a RUBBER. Nope wasn't going to get lucky


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## Robert Porter (Sep 27, 2017)

Indeed, have been confuddled by several of those over the years. But one of my favorites was when we were at a turtle hatch at night, and the ex's Mother asked someone to "put the torch" on the nest. Thought she was going to be summarily executed right there on the spot. Then when I mentioned I had taken Shagging lessons her grandmother fainted dead away! And of course there was the incident with my Mom when she mentioned she had her "fanny" pack to one of the ex's relatives who was then convinced my Mom was a low class tart!


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## pbehn (Sep 27, 2017)

mikewint said:


> Yea them Britishers think they invented the blimey language:
> Took a long time to figure out: , COURGETTE, AUBERGINE,
> 
> Then who knew that the FIRST FLOOR was actually UP one flight of stair.
> ...


Dear me whatever is happening in the colonies? Are the British and especially the English being held responsible for courgettes and aubergines, we have none at all spelling, looks, taste the whole lot is a continental plot.?

How does your maths work out there in colony land. If I am on the first floor in a hotel entrance and floor minus 1 in the cellar or garage your number system has no "zero" in it.


In reality misunderstandings occur in all languages, not just a problem between those on either side of the pond.


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## mikewint (Sep 28, 2017)

pbehn said:


> How does your maths work out there in colony land. If I am on the first floor in a hotel entrance and floor minus 1 in the cellar or garage your number system has no "zero" in it.



Yup, because you are counting real objects and you do not count what you do not have, that is why the very concept of zero as a digit took a long time to develop (7th century), i.e. "how can nothing be something?". Roman Numerals, eg., derived from tally sticks did not have a zero because you do not tally what you do not have. A building cannot have NO (zero) floors but it can have ONE floor, i.e., the FIRST floor or level.
If you go below that level, i.e. the level that is ON the ground, you are in the building's BASEMENT except in Jolly Olde where the term BASEMENT applies only when that space is habitable with windows and often its own entrance, sans windows and entrance it becomes a CELLAR


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## pbehn (Sep 28, 2017)

mikewint said:


> Yup, because you are counting real objects and you do not count what you do not have, that is why the very concept of zero as a digit took a long time to develop (7th century), i.e. "how can nothing be something?". Roman Numerals, eg., derived from tally sticks did not have a zero because you do not tally what you do not have. A building cannot have NO (zero) floors but it can have ONE floor, i.e., the FIRST floor or level.
> If you go below that level, i.e. the level that is ON the ground, you are in the building's BASEMENT except in Jolly Olde where the term BASEMENT applies only when that space is habitable with windows and often its own entrance, sans windows and entrance it becomes a CELLAR



I was only joking Mike, I have had the discussion many times abroad. Both systems work as well as one another, the problems only arise when someone used to one system is confronted with the other. It is like the metric and imperial discussion, both have a logic, but they are different logics. If it were absolutely necessary for counting to be done only in multiples of 10 then we wouldn't have 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day. This I believe is the only worldwide system of measurement, although some countries did have others (like Japan) in the past.

The terms basement and cellar mean what the writer wants them to mean and depends where they come from. No UK supermarket says their hardware department is in the cellar, but if a large drinking establishment serves beer downstairs they may well call it a beer keller.


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## mikewint (Sep 28, 2017)

pbehn said:


> we wouldn't have 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day.



Say thank you to the Egyptians who used a Duodecimal (base 12) number system (most likely because each finger has 3 joints). They divided the day into 12 parts and eventually the night into 12 parts thus 24 parts per day-night cycle. Every day and every night were divided this way irrespective of the actual length of time. Thus short winter days and long winter nights still had 12 parts each and long summer days and short summer nights the same 12 divisions each. That these parts "hours" be of equal length each was not considered until the Greeks (Hipparchus) and did not became common until after mechanical clocks were developed in the 14th century.
As for the 60-parts say thank you to the Sumerians who used a Sexagesimal (base 60) system. Why 60 is unknown but it is convenient for expressing fractions, since 60 is the smallest number divisible by the first six counting numbers as well as by 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.
The Greek astronomer Eratosthenes used this system to divide a circle into 60 parts in order to devise an early geographic system of latitude. A century later, Hipparchus normalized the lines of latitude, making them parallel and obedient to the earth's geometry. He also devised a system of longitude lines that encompassed 360 degrees and that ran north to south, from pole to pole. In his treatise _Almagest_, Claudius Ptolemy subdivided each of the 360 degrees of latitude and longitude into smaller segments. Each degree was divided into 60 parts, each of which was again subdivided into 60 smaller parts. The first division, _partes minutae primae,_ or first minute, became known simply as the "minute." The second segmentation, _partes minutae secundae,_ or "second minute," became known as the second. Clock faces which were circular eventually followed this plan though not until the 16th century. Initially the hour was simply divided into 12 parts though 1/2, 1/4, and 1/3 were more convenient.
By the by, since the advent of UTC timekeeping, in order to keep atomic time in agreement with astronomical time, leap seconds occasionally must be added to UTC. Thus, not all minutes contain 60 seconds. A few rare minutes, occurring at a rate of about eight per decade, actually contain 61.


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## pbehn (Sep 28, 2017)

I prefer to thank the Babylonians who the Egyptians copied

Babylonian records of observations of heavenly events date back to 1,600 BCE. The reason for adopting their arithmetic system is probably because 60 has many divisors, and their decision to adopt 360 days as the length of the year and 3600 in a circle was based on their existing mathematics and the convenience that the sun moves through the sky relative to fixed stars at about 1degree each day.


The constellation Taurus, the bull, a symbol of strength and fertility, figures prominently in the mythology of nearly all early civilizations, from Babylon and India to northern Europe. The Assyrian winged man-headed bull had the strength of a bull, the swiftness of a bird and human intelligence.

From about 700 BCE the Babylonians began to develop a mathematical theory of astronomy, but the equally divided 12-constellation zodiac appears later about 500 BCE to correspond to their year of 12 months of 30 days each. Their base 60 fraction system which we still use today (degrees / hours, minutes and seconds) was much easier to calculate with than the fractions used in Egypt or Greece, and remained the main calculation tool for astronomers until after the 16th century, when decimal notation began to take over.


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## mikewint (Sep 28, 2017)

pbehn said:


> sun moves through the sky relative to fixed stars at about 1degree each day.



I know you don't mean that exactly but let's run with that for a bit. Defining velocity (direction/speed) requires a point of reference. To describe the actual velocity of the sun requires that reference point. #1. Using the local neighborhood stars the sun is moving toward the star Vega at 70,000 km/hr. #2. Relative to the center of the Milky Way the sun's orbital velocity is 828,000 km/hr for a Galactic year of 225 million years. #3. Relative to the CBR (Cosmic Backround Rdiation) the Milky Way galaxy and its neighboring galaxies are moving towards the Great Attractor (vicinity of Leo/Virgo) at 2.1 million km/hr.

Now I suspect you mean the sun's apparent motion along the ecliptic. #1. Each fixed star is really in the same direction from us all day and all the year. The stars seem to us to change their direction only because we live on the moving earth. #2. The sun is nearly, but not exactly, in the same direction from us all day, from its rising to its setting. But this direction changes during the year in consequence of the earth revolving round it.
So we're back to the the Earth's motion. Since the Earth orbits once each year the Sun appears to move across the "fixed" stars (Celestial Sphere) in the same period of time. The ancient astronomers described a "belt" of star patterns (8 degrees above and below the ecliptic) named the zodiac. Good old duodecimal system gives us 12 patterns (constellations) each covering 30 degrees of sky which the sun enters about the 21st of each month. When people tell you their SIGN it is their Sun sign. When I was born the sun was in the constellation Aquarius. 

Now we're back to those fixed reference points. Since the Earth axis is inclined 23.5 degrees to the solar equator the ecliptic is also inclined by the same amount. Thus the sun's path along the ecliptic crosses the celestial equator twice a year, the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes. The time it takes the sun to return to the same equinox is a Solar Year: 365 d - 5 hr - 48 min - 46 sec. Since the ecliptic is a circle were back to 360 degrees.
Howsomeever, we can also measure against the "fixed" stars, i.e., the time it takes the sun to pass the same star, the SIDEREAL Year: 365 d. - 6 hr. - 9 min - 9 sec. A difference of 20 min and 23 sec. As a consequence the position of the equinoxes against the fixed stars is PRECESSING about a degree every 70 years. Thus when the Vernal Equinox is in the constellation Aquarius we will be in the AGE OF AQUARIUS for the next 2,160 years. When is hard to say as astrologers can't agree on the boundaries though they should be 30 degrees apart.


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## pbehn (Sep 28, 2017)

mikewint said:


> I know you don't mean that exactly .



I didn't mean that exactly which is why I posted "about" 365 is about 360 when using the equipment and knowledge available to the Babylonians 3500 years ago. My post was entirely concerned with the origin of the system for time, as per my original post, which was only to show another type of logic anyway.


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