My students from Chicago, who currently study German in Vienna, asked me a good question last week:
Why are the spoken numbers of two digits all “turned around”?
27 is “siebenundzwanzig” (seven and twenty)
56 is “sechsundfünfzig” (six and fifty)
The answer is: It was like that practically everywhere in Europe, we are just old fashioned!
In English, numbers like one-twenty existed,too, and the transition to the new system proceeded naturally and slowly, as a few records show.
There is still use of the old system for the numbers from 11-19, and in Italian from 11-16.
While Norway officially changed the way of speaking numbers about seventy years ago, the German language kept the “turned around numbers” until today.
“Neun mal sieben ist dreiundsechzig.” (9*7=63)
You can find the corresponding newspaper article in German here. The author also talks about intentions of a mathematics professor at that time to change the German way of speaking numbers, in order to facilitate learning and counting.
That’s it for this week. Thank you for reading me.
Do you have a question about German? Don’t hesitate letting me know.
Talk to you next week!
Barbara
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