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

[emsr2d2]

It's like anything else. If there's a perfectly good word for something and someone uses a different (made-up) word for it, we'd be confused. Imagine that instead of saying "house", someone said "box with roof".

Helen: I live in a box with roof.
Sam: What are you talking about?
Helen: Well, I decided that "box with roof" is just another way of saying "house". It makes sense to me.
Sam: Well, it doesn't make sense to the rest of us. Just use the word "house".

 

[Glizdka]

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.

Ninety is a thing and apparently eleventy can be a thing. I can't somehow imagine tenty as a thing; it sounds horrendous!

 

[Tarheel]

@VOYAGER The word is fictitious.

 

[Abba]

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.

Not a teacher

In Turkish, the same logic is applied to all cardinal numbers from 1 to infinity but as far as I know in English, Arabic, Persian, and many Other languages cardinal numbers between 11 to 19 have different logic.

 

[VOYAGER]

@VOYAGER The word is fictitious.

Thank you for your corection. I have used it to mean imaginary or artificial because I have thought it was related to the word fiction. I have found this link. Thank you for your interest again.

 

[VOYAGER]

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)

Although the post is almost finished, it may be interesting for you to see the rest of the list that you added:

English
seven > seventy (7, 70)
eight > eighty (8, 80)
nine > ninety (9, 90)
ten > hundred (10, 100) [ten > tenty (10, 100) could be a variety for non-native speakers but there is no such use in living English !]

This shows, as you have already mentioned, that there exists a relation among the first nine cardinal numbers and their ten folds.

Turkish
altı > altmış (6, 60)
yedi > yetmiş (7, 70)
sekiz > seksen (8, 80)
dokuz > doksan (9, 90)
on > yüz (10, 100)

This shows that there also exists a relationship among the last four-one digit cardinal numbers and their ten folds in Turkish.
The word "yüz" is also a unique word being not derived from the word "on" in Turkish, similar to the corresponding ones in English.

There is a suffix "-ty" to form the ten folds of the last eight-one digit cardinal numbers in English. [The ten fold of the first one digit cardinal number is the number ten by definition: one > ten (1, 10).]

In Turkish, there is not an equivalent "-ty" suffix. There seems as if there is such a suffix for the generation of the ten fold cardinals 60 to 90, but it is not an exact rule because it changes from "-mış/-miş" to "-sen/-san".

It is evident that the etymology can be mysterious for many words in every language.

 

[emsr2d2]

It is evident that the etymology can be mysterious for many words in every language.

If the etymology of language wasn't mysterious (or interesting), people wouldn't study it in such depth and there wouldn't be so many books and websites dedicated to it.

 

[Bryden]

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!

What is the origin of cardinal numbers between 11-19 being different from the rest? Was it a conscious decision that an individual (or group of individuals) made at some point? Given its coherence, it would seem that logical thought has been applied to the greater part of the numerical system. Why is an exception made in this particular area?

 

[VOYAGER]

Why is an exception made in this particular area?

That exception is one of the unsolved or unknown mysteries in English language. I know it is imaginary but perhaps only a group of linguistic time travellers can find the answer if time travel were possible.

 

[Tarheel]

The words "eleven" and "twelve" come from words meaning "one left after ten" and "two left after ten," and "teen" comes from "ten".

www.mentalfloss.com

 

[probus]

Time travel is not really necessary for this because we know a lot about the history of English.

Here is a brief timeline summary:

Before the year 1 AD Great Britain had been settled by Jutes, Angles, and Saxons. These Germanic invaders drove the Picts and Scots who were already in Britain north into present-day Scotland. The Roman occupation (56 BC -450 AD) brought a great influx of Latin words into that proto-English language.

The Norman invasion in 1066 AD in turn made another large inflow of French words. Note that cow, pig and sheep have Saxon roots while beef, pork and mutton come from French. That has led some to speculate that Saxons were rearing the animals while the Normans were eating the meat.

Anybody who has read Shakespeare will know that by 1600 or so English had become pretty similar to our modern language. In my opinion, it is reasonable to say that by the mid-1700s English had essentially become what we still use today. Changes since then have been merely incremental.

 

[5jj]

There is a fair amount of inaccurate information in this thread, so I am closing it now.