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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.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
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?
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.
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.
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.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.