However, the number 100 has its own name “ehun” so apparently it’s not considered as 5 x 20.Ĭlick here for a full 1-100 list of Basque numbers. 89 – laurogeita bederatzi – (4 × 20) and 9.68 – hirurogeita zortzi – (3 × 20) and 8.Up until the number 29 everything is quite familiar to us, but from that on, ’20-ness’ kicks in and makes number 30 turn into “20 and 10”, number 40 into “2 x 20” and so forth. In spite of its vigesimal nature, Basque’s counting system is rather easy to grasp since it doesn’t contain exceptions or mixtures of any other systems, as it’s usually the case. Image: Daniele Schirmo – Wikipedia Commons The first one will be easy, pinky promise 😉.
So now that we know what “decimal” and “vigesimal” is, let’s take a closer look at Basque and Welsh. The interesting thing about the languages I’m going to tell you about is that they barely use that system, but a “vigesimal” one (or combinations of it with others), which means their numbers revolve around groups of 20. Just like the examples I gave you at the very beginning of this post, you take a word for “60”, you think of it as 6 times 10 and then you add “3” to it. Most of the numerical systems you may be familiar with are “decimal systems” which means they are based around the number 10 and its multiples. Image: Designed by Vvstudio – A little bit of background Today’s turn will be Welsh and Basque, but before getting into specifics… These languages are Basque, Welsh, Breton and Danish, but for the sake of readability I’ll divide it into two parts. Which brings us to today’s topic! Here I’ll be telling you about unusual ways of counting used in 4 European languages. Surprisingly enough, we don’t really need to go very far to find some examples, we have them here in Europe. (Notice how I’m leaving a big one out? I’m looking at you, French!).Īctually, it turns out that there are quite a bunch of ways to express a quantity and of course not all languages use the same one. Weeeeell, if you’re nodding your head after reading that, perhaps you are a native speaker of one of the big European languages such as English, Spanish, Italian or maybe even German, even though they turn things around a little, but it’s still pretty much the same. Counting systems seem like a pretty straightforward thing, right? You just add a few simple numbers like 60+3 to get 63 or 80+7 to form 87.
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