Gregory's ServerKids studying the French language today have it so easy. Some of us had to study French way back in one thousand nine hundred four twenties seventeen
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  @TritTriton @sarahbecan Canada also an exception, no? I am misremembering our modules on global French, perhaps @TheDonsieLass @sarahbecan Québécois is a VERY particular variant of French (not the standard one: they have a lot of words and expressions that are not in use anywhere else, or not in the same way, some of them being just a word-to-word translation from English; no wonder why Google Translate suxx so much to translate EN to FR… 😒), but I don’t think they have a different way to count than in France’s French. @TritTriton @sarahbecan Thanks. I do remember that it's very different in a loot of ways and that people can tell easily from listening whether one is speaking Québécois or another type of French. I even saw some comedy making jokes about the Québécois accent but my French wasn't accomplished enough to really notice the difference at the time. I was lucky that my university French course has sections on the language and culture of Francophone communities outside of France, really @TheDonsieLass @TritTriton @sarahbecan I learned French in Brussels. Parisians and Quebecois all wrinkle their brows in discomfort at an American accented Bruxelloise. Enough that I've had someone drop into English to demand "WHERE did you learn French? In *Brussels*?!" It's like learning English in the Bronx, I guess. @McPatrick Hahaha, this is fantastic information. It reminds me of my uncle, who learned German informally from friends and work associates there who speak primarily regional dialect. He has been told he speaks "truck driver German" @McPatrick @TritTriton @sarahbecan As an aside, Bruxelles is one of my favourite place names to say in French (whereas I think Brugge is more fun to say in Vlaamse than to call it Bruges)  @sarahbecan Far easier than learning Gaelic in nine hundredteen four twenty 'n' a-seventeen It's the year two thousand 'n' three over thwenty right now though. @gunchleoc @sarahbecan Also easier than learning danish in the year one thousand nine hundred seven and half of the fifth twenty. Haha.  @clem @gunchleoc @sarahbecan I can't get my head to parse this. What does the "half of the fifth twenty" part mean?? @lizzard @gunchleoc @sarahbecan Like French, Danish has relics of a base-20 system when it comes to name numbers. But then… 50, 70 and 90 are tricky. @lizzard @gunchleoc @sarahbecan I'm not sure I managed to really explain it, but when a Dane says "97" they actually say "seven and half of the fifth time twenty". @clem @lizzard @sarahbecan Yep, the subtraction thing is fun in Danish and really does your head in. On the bright side, you can cram these as pieces of vocabulary, and the rest is then just 10-based math. For Gaelic, they actually dug out a medieval numbering system that is 10-based to teach math in schools. This has the additional advantage of not having to change word order from 39 to 40: In the traditional system, 23 = three over thwenty, 63 = three twenty 'n' a-three. @clem @lizzard @sarahbecan There's also some shortcuts: 50 = half hundred if you want to avoid two thwenty 'n' a-ten, and 99 = hundred but one, if you want to avoid four twenty 'n' a-nineteen.  @sarahbecan I had begun studying even before that, during the thousand nine hundred four twenties. @darkoneko Colloquial spoken English usually breaks it down to "nineteen ninety-seven." I never heard a shorter way to say 1997 in French than "mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix-sept"! Did French speakers shorten it?  @sarahbecan back in Junior school the teacher would make us all say today's date after her at the start of class (probably as a way to practice numbers, day names, and month names). edit: oh and the day we finally started saying deux mille, wooo that was a breath of fresh air 😂 @sarahbecan And turning pale when you had to answer the question when you were born. On the plus side, I got to dress up as a revolting peasant with a pitchfork in a performance before the school.  @sarahbecan I studied Latin in one thousand one hundred before one thousand ten before one hundred three. @sarahbecan I just had to imagine a kid being born in December of 1999 wishing their parents had waited a few weeks longer, so he has an easier time stating when he was born in French class. (being a person learning Swedish born on a 27th, one of the worst numbers to pronounce in Swedish)  @sarahbecan I'm actually learning french, but I don't I have it ez since I kinda have to learn using sources written in my second language, which is fine, because my english is pretty good |
@sarahbecan Yeah…
1997 = 1000 + 9 × 100 + 4 × 20 + 10 + 7 (except in Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland).