How did you guys even get to this thought process for saying this sort of thing? Why would you work in fractions for whole numbers in language to start? Is this a monarch thing like they fancied themselves a math wizard so they said it like it was a solution on countdown and others mimicked to keep them happy/sound smart themselves?

When I'm in Denmark and have to say 92 I just say "kamelåså"

Its so annoying with phone numbers as well, depending how someone pronounces is. My mom always says phone numbers in 2 digits, like 06 12 34 56 78 (06 twelve fourandthirty sixandfifty eightandseventy) and you just get confused because you want to type in the first number pronounced

Yes! I'm German and I hate it. It's also very inconvenient when entering numbers into a spreadsheet or something, because you have to know the whole number before you can start typing it.

As a non-native working in German, the numbers are one of the trickiest parts.

My jobs generally involve a lot of math and discussions of numbers, and I often struggle with swapping numbers around in my head. Especially because when you get to bigger numbers people often switch between (or use a combination of) listing individual digits left-to-right and saying multi-digit numbers.

The though is when you occasionally notice natives mess it up!

The older generation in Norway also uses that format. I usually tell them that we aren't under German occupation anymore, so they should use the sensible format.

There's also a reason for imperial measurements, but it's still a worse system than metric.

I agree with your broader point about linguistics, but Chesterton's fence has never sat right with me. Consider the inverse:

This annoying and unnecessary fence is an inconvenience, but since nobody can remember what it's for, we dare not remove it

there's always a reason for why things are the way they are

Of course, no one is saying that the Danes were so drunk that they simply wanted to make their numbering so much different than everyone else. The problem is that they don't want to change it, probably because "it has always been this way" or something.

Even Norwegian, which was historically more like Danish, changed to using "normal" counting in the 1950s. So it can be done, but Danes seemingly don't want to change, despite the fact it makes their language harder to learn/use.

So now you're calling me old? THE NERVE!

Ehh, i'm not giving France a pass either.

The answer to 100 - 8 should not be four twenties and a twelve. We're counting, not making change.

French counting is bunk. Way, Way, better then Denmark though apparently

Eleven and twelve kinda are as well. They literally mean "one left" (ain-lif) and "two left" (twa-lif) with the "over ten" being implied.

German's my first language and I am kinda proficient in english but I never realized that the english numbers 13 to 19 work like like ours...

What if I told you that all words are made up?

In Belgium we use nonante, not octante, that is, iirc only used in Switzerland. That means we at least don’t use quatre-vingt onze etc.

Not Danish here... Isn't that 12.5?

That makes perfect sense to me though. In Swedish we'd say fem i halv fyra. Five minutes to half four.

But in English half four would be short for half past four. I guess.

Counting like the Danish, however, that is an abomination.

No, 1-12 are influenced by the old base 12 Germanic/Norse system, which is why -teen starts at thirteen, same as in German (11: elf, 12: zwölf, 13: dreizehn, 14: vierzehn & so on)... The -teen for 1x in english is also a carryover from this, being threeten, fourten, fiveten etc. with only numbers over 20 having their orders reversed - German has something similar with "und" only appearing in numbers over 20. English did historically too, eg. "four and twenty blackbirds".

Base 20 was historically used for large numbers though, eg "four score and seven years" by Abraham Lincoln, which was a poetic way of saying 87 inspired from Psalms 90:10, which says "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away." in the King James Version, which reflects that using base 20 for large numbers (and not just 80) was not uncommon in the 17th century.

Seems like they're not, although I get your thought process. If we take Old English (which was English before the Norman conquest) and modern Swedish (since Sweden was never conquered by anyone from France or the Romans) as comparisons, we have

Eleven: OE endleofan, Swedish elva Twelve: OE twelf, Swedish tolv Thirteen: OE threotiene, Swedish tretton Fourteen: OE feowertiene, Swedish fjortun

I think you can see the pattern. These actually all have similar common ancestors going into Proto-Germanic, so they're way older than the French influence on English.

Since other Indo-European languages like German and Russian do the same thing as English where the line between "one word numbers" and "two word numbers" is 20 to 21, I suspect that originates waaaaay back in the history of these languages

So do you mean to suggest "quatre-vingt-dix" just means 90 and doesn't also mean "four-twenty-ten"?