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submitted 11 months ago by genfood@feddit.de to c/europe@feddit.de
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[-] federalreverse@feddit.de 155 points 11 months ago

What's going on in Denmark?

[-] SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 231 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It's base 20 like in France, plus the quirk that we have an ordinal numeral way of saying half integers, i.e. 1.5 is "half second", 2.5 is "half third", 4.5 is "half fifth". So 92 is said as "two and half fifth times twenty". We've since made the "times twenty" implicit for maximum confusion, so it's just said as "two and half fifths".

Also, the ordinal numeral system for halves is only really used for 1.5 these days, so the numbers don't really make sense to anyone. When speaking to other Scandinavians, we often just say "nine ten two".

Why don't we just change it to the more sensible system then? Because language is stubborn.

[-] Zron@lemmy.world 24 points 11 months ago

So the Danish can do this bullshit with everyday numbers and it’s cool because language , but I mention that it’s 70 degrees outside and everyone starts arguing about metric?

Everything is arbitrary, I’m gonna go build a dresser in multiples of rabbit foot while you all figure something out.

[-] DepressedCoconut@lemmy.world 22 points 11 months ago

Danish people are environmentally damaged by the flatness of their country and the rest of Scandinavia pitty them. We will take care of this. We will teach them how to speak. Soonish.

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this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
768 points (98.0% liked)

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