In another thread, I supposed that despite that fact that people have ten fingers, amounts of items leading up to and including twelve were more common because twelve is more easily divisible evenly by two, three, four, and six.
Both English and German which are related switch to a -teen -zehn auf Deutsch ending after twelve. Based on that thread, so does Norwegian. Could this be the explanation? Looking at other languages Arabic, Japanese, even a related romance language of French , this doesn't seem to apply, and you'd think that if something so fundamental as divisibility were the explanation, we'd see a more universal distribution across them. In all Indo-European languages, as well as Semitic, Mongolian, and most primitive languages, the base of numeration is ten, i.
All these languages have independent words for and , and some languages for even higher decimal units. And presumably this was inherited in other Germanic languages. Note that we can still discern a trace of "two" in "twelve".
That answers your question, but note that there are traces of other bases in our number words:. It is true that in addition to the decimal system, two other bases are reasonably widespread, but their character confirms to a remarkable degree the anthropomorphic nature of our counting scheme. These two other systems are the quinary, base 5, and the vigesimal, base Many languages still bear the traces of a quinary system, and it is reasonable to believe that some decimal systems passed through the quinary stage.
Some philologists claim that even the Indo-European number languages are of a quinary origin. They point to the Greek word pempazein , to count by fives, and also to the unquestionably quinary character of the Roman numerals. However, there is no other evidence of this sort, and it is much more probable that our group of languages passed through a preliminary vigesimal stage. While pure vigesimal systems are rare, there are numerous languages where the decimal and the vigesimal systems have merged.
The old French used this form still more frequently; a hospital in Paris originally built for blind veterans bears the quaint name of Quinze-Vingt Fifteen-score ; the name Onze-Vingt Eleven-score was given to a corps of police-sergeants comprising men.
Also, we do have words like "dozen" 12 and "gross" any others? The Online Etymology Dictionary confidently says :. Twelve reflects the same formation; outside Germanic the only instance of this formation is in Lithuanian, which uses it all the way to 19 vienio-lika "eleven," dvy-lika "twelve," try-lika "thirteen," keturio-lika "fourteen," etc.
This is evidence of English having roots in a base counting system. This was almost certainly based off counting using the joints of your fingers four fingers, three joints , and using your thumb as a pointer to keep track of where you were. As a computer scientist, I've trained myself to use a similar system using the tops of my fingers as well, giving base counting on one hand. I quote this helpful answer from Quora. One explanation for the departure from the pattern is that the Old Germanic ancestor languages of English could essentially only count up to ten, with hacks for numbers just over ten.
The more computational system of the -teens later came to augment -- but did not replace -- the two ancient numerals. The part of the answer that begins "Edit: On further research In brief, the answer is that eleven and twelve probably do fit a pattern -- a different one from the -teen words. A theory the Oxford English Dictionary ventures about the origin of -lif- is that it is cognate with Germanic words meaning "left" in the sense of "remaining" , so that eleven is "one left" that is, one remaining after counting ten , and twelve is, analogously, "two left".
The theory that -lif- has something to do with ten is considered discredited by OED but not by all etymological dictionaries. There is not much etymological support, it seems, for the theory of a base-twelve origin of these words.
Menninger also subscribes to the "one left" and "two left" theory of eleven and twelve. He continues:. This is striking evidence that the Germanic number sequence at one time ran only as far as ten. And why do we celebrate Easter in the first place? Why Do People Celebrate Easter? We all […]. Facebook YouTube Twitter Instagram. The Latest.
Last Updated On: February 27, With the exception of zero through ten, most numbers seem to follow a formulaic pattern when written or said aloud: you say the tens place followed by the units place though this is flipped for the teens. Comments comments. Language and Grammar Learn Something.
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October 1, Articles. April 10, Articles. In fact, some languages of primitive cultures only have number words for one, two, and many. So the basic number words up to ten formed first, then they were extended a bit with the —lif ending. Maybe there was a threelif , fourlif type system, but 11 and 12 were used more often in daily life.
Many number systems are based on 12 because it's divisible by the most numbers, and because you can count to 12 on one hand by using your thumb to count three knuckles on each of the other fingers. We have the word dozen because 12 is so useful. If 11 and 12 are being used more frequently, the forms for them will stick, even when another system starts to develop. You can extend that idea to other number words. We have more irregularities of pronunciation in the tens twenty , thirty , fifty instead of twoty , threety , fivety because we've been making everyday use of those numbers for longer than we have for two hundred , three hundred , and five hundred.
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