this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
772 points (98.0% liked)
Europe
8324 readers
1 users here now
News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, 🇩🇪 ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures
Rules
(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)
- Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
- No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
- No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.
Also check out !yurop@lemm.ee
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What's going on in Denmark?
In Czech, we say „čtvrt na osm“ (quarter to eight), „půl osmé“ (half of eighth) and „tři čtvrtě na osm“ (¾ to eight) to mean
19:15,19:30and19:45, respectively, so I kinda get it.Similarly, in German, 🕢=„halb acht“.
TIL that it not French with the weirdest way to count. I still don't really get the Danish way. Even with your explanation.
It’s not really an explanation, just a table where I leave the linguistically inclined to figure it out. The point is, the “s” at the end is short for “×20” and “half fifth” is short for ●●●●◖ = 4½ (four and half of the fifth).
Thanks. Do you know the history of that?
Maybe the Danish don't just count with their fingers to 10, but include their toes... So 10 fingers + 10 toes = 20?
"Four score and seven years ago" from the Gettysburg Address... Many languages have or had words for counting in 20's. They've just mostly gone out of fashion.