German numbers are weird because we kinda switch the last two digits.
43 in most languages becomes ‘40 - 3’, but in german you say ‘3 & 40’.
But we do not pronounce the whole number backwards.
143 in most languages becomes ‘100 - 40 - 3’, in german you say ‘100 - 3 & 40’.
Since I primarily use English despite being a native German speaker I always get those jumbled up and it bugs me so much. People dictate long numbers in sets of two or three digits, but instead of saying the digits, they say them as numbers. Then it’s like “3 & 40” and I write 34 because my brain goes “first number, first digit” until I notice that I made this error again and have to correct it. It takes way more mental effort than it should and it annoys me that so many people say these as numbers instead of as actual sets of digits, which wouldn’t be a problem in most other languages, but nooooo of course we need to add a good ol’ switcheroo right at the end there
I like the sense of suspense. Leave l leaves sometimes critical information to the last second!
The concept really is bullshit, and that’s coming from a German. For certain kinds of triple digit numbers people sometimes resort to saying the single digits in a row (“drei fünf neun” instead of dreiundertneunundfünfzig). Less misunderstandings, and faster.
dreiundertneunundfünfzig
And you’re trying to tell me that the german language is real?
That word isn’t real.
It’s spelled dreihundertneunundfünfzig
I’ve been learning German and I call it the surprise ending language because everything is like that. In complex phrases, you often leave the primary verb until the very last word. So you might get something like:
I’d like to, with your daughter and a duck, this coming weekend, at the park, if it’s not raining, with our bicycles, go for a ride.
I will accede to your request but only under one condition which is that I come.
Just like dates in English!
*American
That’s ridiculous
We only do that for the numbers 13-19, it’s much more logical.
Over the border in the Netherlands we also do this and it annoys the crap out of me coming from another country.
In Belgium as well.
It even annoys me as a native, because it makes writing down a number someone else tells you irritating since it isn’t in the same order.
That is why I usually just give single digits when telling someone a phone number.
A bit confusing to read. The points are placed on the y-axis using ordinals rather than cardinals. This means if you were to extend the plotting (say, up to 200) it would cause the existing data points to move around. That’s not usually what we expect when plotting data.
Edit: actually, the problem is more severe than I initially thought. If the y-axis were plotted with cardinals (the way we usually plot data) then the German case would show 10 horizontal lines, immediately revealing a pattern in the data (caused by Germans speaking the ones digit before the tens digit).
Am I reading this wrong? Why is “One” at the very top, signifying it is last alphabetically? There are many numbers that alphabetically come after that…
It’s not. It starts with zero.
But then “two” and “three” should be side by side no?
Edit: also “four” and “five”
It sorts the entire word. 4 is after 5 because FO is after FI.
