@infobeautiful Danish isn't actually that different from the 2+90 countries. It just looks that way due to litteral translation.

• Some core numbers are 'named' as units equal to multiples of twenty. 'Tres' is three twenties, thus 'sixty'. 'Firs' is four twenties, thus 'eighty'. 'Fems' would be five twenties, thus '[one] hundred' (though for 100 itself they would normally use 'hundrede'). The naming of these are leftovers from an abbreviated description of a 'vigesimal' (Base-20) counting system.

• When 'halv' is in front of one of these, it is effectively subtracting half of such a [20] unit, i.e. it is subtracting 10.

• Danish people are not calculating numbers named in this way. They do not think out the logic that 'Tres' is three twenties, thus it is sixty. They just learned that 'Tres' means sixty as a child or that 'halvfems' means ninety. It mainly becomes weird for non-Danes when the components that make up the name of a number are read/translated litterally.

• Additional digits are added in front of the numeric description with 'og' meaning 'and' (or 'added to').

Thus 'tooghalvfems' could also be read as 'two added to five units [of 20], with a half a [20] unit [10] subtracted' or 2+(5x20)-(20/2)=92. However in the Danish mind, this is parsed more simply as 'two & [plus] ninety' [2+90].

@infobeautiful The equation for Danish is also somewhat misleading in that it is not a literal rendition of what they usually say, unlike examples for the other countries. They are not normally mentioning 'tyve' [20] in the common (abbreviated) form and yet it is written in the provided equation, which implies that they do.

@infobeautiful A good way for English speakers (or other languages with Germanic descent) to relate to the idea certain numbers can have quirky names with history behind them, is to consider '11' and '12'. Why are they not just called 'oneteen' and 'twoteen' in English? There are historic, lingusitic roots to the naming of '11' and '12' but you don't actually have to know these to use them. You can just memorise what they mean and get on with your life. The Danes (as far as I know) are largely doing the same with halvtreds, tres, halvfjerds, firs and halvfems. They probably have a better concept of why they are named like this (as it was likely explained to them at some point) but they are not thinking about it day to day. Those are just the names.

@ruario @infobeautiful wait until you know how Swedes read the time

@sverx Is it particularly funky? AFAIK it is like Norwegian. I assume you mean stuff like '5:30' where a Norwegian would say 'halv seks' (half six) because they count how close you are towards the next hour, not how far you are past the current one?

You get used to that quite fast and either is equally logical/illogical when you really stop and think about it. It is not much different than 2+90 or 90+2 for expressing 92 in the initial example from this thread.

@ruario yes, I also assume Norwegian is similar - what's especially funny to me it's the 5 minutes to/past the half hour, that in the 5:25 case would be "five to half to six" and in the 5:35 case would be "five past half to six"

indeed it's something one can get used to...

@sverx @ruario That’s exactly how it works in Swiss German, too

@luz yeah, I like it right up until you are talking with someone and you are not sure which logic they are using to define time because you both have different linguistic backgrounds and it is not clear if one of you is trying to accommodate for the other. In such cases I am more likely to say the hour then the minutes, e.g. "so you mean 'seven thirty five'?"

@sverx

@luz @sverx What I do think is confusing with time for many is the AM/PM system instead of a 24 hour clock. 12 hours usually works well enough when speaking to someone since AM/PM is usually not even needed as there is often enough context. Written however on things like timetables it gets messy fast. I even once went to the trouble of writing my own explanation for people who are confused.

How to use the AM/PM notation when talking about time

In the US (and a few other places) the 24 hour clock is not commonly used or understood by the average person. When context cannot distinguish between two…

Ruarí's Thoughts (ruario.vivaldi.net)

But honestly, I wish places like the US would just adopt a 24 hour clock.

@luz @sverx In both the UK and Norway, people will often speak with 12 hour times but written communication like timetables or meeting invites will be with 24hour times.

Americans do their calendars and timetables with AM and PM notation, which is insane. Especially as I have seen timetables that have 12 marked 'incorrectly' based on the most common way to interpret.

It's a horrible system. But again, Americans also avoid metric, so…

@ruario @luz @sverx Using 12-hour times for spoken communication and 24-hour times for written communication is actually pretty common throughout most of Europe.

See this article on Wikipedia (particularly the map)

Date and time representation by country - Wikipedia

(en.wikipedia.org)

@AltCode @luz @sverx Indeed and this is fine but sometimes we have to speak to non-Europeans, like Americans.

If you are mildly interested in what I wrote but do not fancy reading a dry post about time notation—and honestly, who could blame you —the TL;DR is:

• You can remember the order by recalling that 'A' is before 'P' (alphabetically)
• Consider 12 the zero hour, so 12AM is midnight followed by 1AM
• Avoid using AM and PM for the 12 hours. Just say 12 midnight or 12 midday/noon