Do the words rethought for the Cardinal numbers 11 to 19 make any sense for the native speakers?

[VOYAGER]

The logic followed in English for the generation of cardinal numbers between 20 and 100 is not valid for the cardinal numbers 11 to 19. For example 21=twenty-one, 22=twenty-two, 23=twenty-three and so forth as usual. This is to say that basic numbers from 1 to 9 are written after 20, 30, 40 up to 90 to generate any two decimal number between 20 and 100 accordingly. But as all you know, the words for the cardinal numbers between 11 and 19 are written as eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen and nineteen.

However they would be named as ten-one for 11, ten-two for 12, ten-three for 13, ten-four for 14, ten-six for 16, ten-seven for 17, ten-eight for 18 and ten-nine for 19 if the same logic used for the cardinals between 20 to 100 had been followed. I know what I write is bizarre but I just wonder whether or not it makes sense for the native English speakers. Please do believe in that the cardinal numbers 11 o 19 in my native language are spoken by this reasoning.

I hope there may be some people who can seriously think on this probably strange post.

 

[emsr2d2]

That's the beauty of English - you can't apply logic to a lot of the language. If someone knew nothing at all about the language but had noticed how 21, 34, 56 etc are said, they might logically assume that your "ten-one", "ten-six" etc were correct, but they're not. Don't ask me why!

 

[teechar]

you can't apply to logic to a lot of the language.

I believe there are two tos in there. There should only be one to.

 

[emsr2d2]

I believe there are two tos in there. There should only be one to.

I've removed the errant to so there is indeed now one to not two tos.

 

[probus]

In describing the ages of the hobbits in Middle Earth, Tolkien coined the word eleventy. Bilbo Baggins was turning 111 years old and decided to throw a party for his eleventy-first birthday. But it is not standard English.

 

[5jj]

However they would be named as ten-one for 11, ten-two for 12, ten-three for 13, ten-four for 14, ten-six for 16, ten-seven for 17, ten-eight for 18 and ten-nine for 19 if the same logic used for the cardinals between 20 to 100 had been followed.

Well, we don't have two-one or twoty-one, three-one or threety-one, etc. We also don't have oneth, twoth or threeth. We just accept these oddities.

I know what I write is bizarre but I just wonder whether or not it makes sense for the native English speakers.

Yes. We don't notice it,

In fact the only two really 'different' ones are 11 and twelve, There is a parallelism beween 13 and 30, 14 and 40, 15 and 40, etc,

 

[jutfrank]

I'm not sure I understand what the question here is.

 

[teechar]

I think it's about 11, 12 ... and then up to 19 having special names, unlike numbers 20 and above.

 

[VOYAGER]

I'm not sure I understand what the question here is.

You can just try to express how you feel when you hear the odd words ten-one, ten-two, ten-three, ten-four, ten-five, ten-six, ten-seven, ten-eight and ten-nine. Your mother tongue is English so it can either make a sense or it can't make a sense to you. I just wonder whether or not it makes a sense to you because I can't know what a native speaker understands when he or she hears these strange words.

The reason why I can't know the feeling is just because of the fact that a person can not process a language other than native language exactly like the mother tongue. Thanks for your help already now.

 

[5jj]

If I heard someone say 'My son will be ten-eight next week' or 'Her boyfriend bought her one-two red roses,' I wouldn't know what they were talking about.

 

[Tarheel]

You can just state your opinion about the odd words ten-one, ten-two, ten-three, ten-four, ten-five, ten-six, ten-seven, ten-eight and ten-nine. Your mother tongue is English, so it either makes sense or it doesn't. I just wonder whether if it makes sense to you, because I can't know what a native speaker understands when he or she hears these strange words.

The reason why I can't know the feeling is just because of the fact that a person can not process a language other than native language exactly like the mother tongue. Thanks for your help already now.

I had never encountered "make a sense" before. Nor had I encountered "already now" before.

 

[emsr2d2]

I just looked up how to say the numbers 11 to 19 in Turkish. I can see that they are created by saying the words for "ten one", "ten two" etc. However, let me turn your question around. I also looked at the numbers 20, 30, 40 etc in Turkish. They don't seem to bear any relation to the number that starts them but in English they do.

English
two > twenty (2, 20)
three > thirty (3, 30)
four > forty (4, 40)
five > fifty (5, 50)
six > sixty (6, 60)

Turkish
iki > yirmi (2, 20)
üç > otuz (3, 30)
dört > kirk (4, 40)
bes > elli (5, 50)

You can see where I'm going with this. In the same way that there is no relation between thirteen and twenty-three, or fifteen and thirty-five, your native language also has no connection between single numbers and the number you get when you multiply it by ten.
If I decided to say something like "iki onluk" ("two tens") instead of "yirmi" ("twenty"), how would you feel? What would your reaction be? I imagine you'd think the same as we do - "Huh?! What are they talking about?"

This is why we always encourage learners not to simply translate word-for-word from their native language into English. Frequently, that just doesn't work.

 

[VOYAGER]

I had never encountered "make a sense" before. Nor had I encountered "already now" before.

Thank you very much for your valuable corrections. You are right for the mistakes that you have pointed out. There shouldn't be the article a between the words make and sense. It seems that I was not careful enough. The two words "already now" have been used to mean, in one sense, for thanking someone in advance, in other words for thanking someone before someone's respond or reply made. Now I see, after your correction, that the dictionary I have looked up might have given a wrong return.

 

[VOYAGER]

They don't seem to bear any relation to the number that starts them but in English they do.

If I decided to say something like "iki onluk" ("two tens") instead of "yirmi" ("twenty"), how would you feel? What would your reaction be? I imagine you'd think the same as we do - "Huh?! What are they talking about?"

Thank you very much for your explanations. The first one is remarkable. The second one is quite related to the action which can be predicted when native speakers hear such unusual words created in their mother tongue. I can now have some partial idea about what they probably feel. This may show something magic behind the languages.

 

[Glizdka]

What a great question, VOYAGER! I wrestled with this exact mystery myself a couple of years ago. My final conclusion is that it's just how people speak, it makes sense to them, and they copy what others say, simple as that. If you want to, however, you can read my thoughts on how it came to be this way:

The suffixes -teen and -ty are the tens you're looking for. They both come from the ancient equivalent of the word ten, but have evolved throughout the ages to sound the way they do now.

The word twenty literally means "two tens" if you look at its origin. I could imagine the ancestors of those who speak Modern English literally saying the Old English version of "two tens", which has gradually changed over time to "twenty". That makes numbers like twenty-three literally mean "two tens (and) three".

The word thirteen literally means "three (and) ten", in a similar fashion, when looking at its origin. This is, I suppose, as close as it gets to the "ten-three" idea you had in the original post.

The mystery I haven't been able to solve is why English has unique names for the numbers 11 and 12—eleven and twelve—instead of following the pattern and using something like oneteen and twenteen. I thought it was a remnant of Old English using base twelve rather than base ten, but the sources I've consulted state that English has never used base twelve. I'd be grateful if one of the distinguished linguists present in this thread shed some light on it.

 

[emsr2d2]

This is the explanation I've seen several times before (for some reason my laptop won't post links this morning so I've done a screenshot):

 

[Glizdka]

So eleven and twelve are somewhat equivalent to "one more (than ten)" and "two more (than ten)"? German elf and zwölf would be the same kind of thing then.

A Wikipedia article points me towards the influence Old Norse has had on the evolution of English, and how the long hundred was used well into the middle ages. The existence of words like dozen makes me believe English did use some quasi-duodecimal system, at some point in its history at least. Not that long ago, the UK used the pound-shilling-pence system, in which the number 12 played a key role (12 pence in a shilling).

It might also be a consequence of the significance of the number 12 in European history. 12 months, 12 disciples, 12-hour clock. While looking at the etymology of the words eleven and twelve suggests a decimal origin, the fact these words have survived to this day suggests they must have had some special role in the way English counted stuff.

 

[emsr2d2]

@VOYAGER - Please stop mixing up the Reply button and the Report button. You have reported your own thread twice now, and the contents are clearly supposed to be a post in the thread.

 

[VOYAGER]

it's just how people speak, it makes sense to them, and they copy what others say, simple as that.

Thank you very much for your kind and valuable reply to my message. To me, the historical origins and the development of a language are still a great mystery because it's quite complex to analyze back to the origin or origins of a language. Since it is a huge topic including several uncertainties, it's very difficult to reach an accurate result.

What I am interested in is just to have an idea about how native speakers feel when they hear sentences like (1) "Thomas is ten-eight years old and his brother is ten-two years old." or (2) "There are ten-six boys and ten-seven girls in our classroom." Will they understand the fictious words "ten-eight", "ten-two", "ten-six" and "ten-seven" as 18, 12, 16 and 17 respectively or will they think these words to be completely non-sense?

Please note that I do not claim that these fictious words for numbers should be replaced with the usual words.

 

[emsr2d2]

We will think them nonsensical.