nineteentimes table

[blueeye]

In Abraham Verghese's novel Cutting for Stone there is a term I do not understand and I didn't find anywhere. The context is following:

What promise she’d shown in those early years, sailing through church school in Asmara, skipping grades, speaking fluent official Italian (as opposed to the bar-and-cinema version spoken by many Ethiopians, in which prepositions and pronouns were dispensed with altogether), and able to recite even her nineteentimes table.​

What does the "nineteentimes table" mean? Thanx.

 

[BobK]

Tables seem to have gone out of fashion in the UK education system, but in the '50s I remember chanting (with the rest of my class) 'Once one is one, Once two is two...' - the 'One times table'. There were many others (infinitely many, I suppose, but most people only learnt the first 12). The twelve times table went '12 times 1 is 12, 12 times 2 is 24, 12 times 3 is 36...'.

I think we stopped at 12 because in those days a shilling (today's 5p) was divided into 12 pennies, and knowing the twelve times table was nearly essential for handling money competently. In some schools - just to show they were 'better' than others - they learnt the 13 times table.

So the 19 times table is

19 times 1 is 19
19 times 2 is 38
19 times 3 is 57
...

(Nowadays a child asked 'What's 19 times 7?' would say 'Easy, it's 140 - 7', but in my day we preferred to do things the hard way!)

b