At some point I just want to train myself to say it the "right" way, even if it sounds wrong in german and people will look at me weirdly. But somebody has to start the trend, right?
At some point I just want to train myself to say it the "right" way, even if it sounds wrong in german and people will look at me weirdly. But somebody has to start the trend, right?
Modern: 32 = "thirty-two" (similar to English)
Old: 32 = "two-and-thirty" (similar to German)
The modern system was introduced by the government in the 50s as a requirement from the national phone operator.
This was before automatic switches were common, so users had to speak with an operator to patch to the correct destination. They insisted that the old counting method introduced too many errors. The government agreed and made a new law requiring schools to teach the new method.
If you mean 42 and read out "zwei und vierzig" I will pause and have to figure out if you meant 240 and you know it. This kind of thing just seems almost intentionally inconsiderate because of the unnecessary ambiguity.
But I can see how it would be annoying in german.
As weird as the german digit flip is, French I understand is worse with the number names, actually involving math.
Not trying to be difficult... from what little I remember of my 2 years of college German, zwei und vierzig is 42.
Consider this: "sixty-nine" is clearly 69. But when spoken out, especially in a long string of digits (like an IBAN, a banking code) that might be announced as "six, nine" or "sixty-nine" or "sixty...nine" or even "six...ty-nine".
So even in English there's some chance of ambiguity whether it is supposed to be 6-9 or 6-0-9 (consider: "forty-two, sixty, nine" for 4-2-6-0-9).
In German the awkward inversion makes this worse. So you might get "neunundsechzig" (6-9), "neun...undsechzig" (9... no, wait, 6-9? or maybe 9-6-0?) or "neunund...sechzig" (...6-9). Although the last one is unambiguous, you're basically stuck waiting for the end because you're trying to write digits down left to right and don't want to skip digits and backtrack.
As for why "neun...und sechzig" is ambiguous: with that weird pause it's not clear if this is still 69 or literally "9 and 60" (which is what the word "neunundsechzig" means), i.e. 9-60. As people sometimes emphasise the final digit or digit pair by saying "and" before it (like you would in a list of words), this is ambiguous and at least might give a listener pause.
"Hundert" and "und" generally aren't similar enough for this to be a problem and there's a special place in hell for people who read out groups of digits longer than 2 as numbers, so this isn't generally a problem. Most people do however tend to slur the "und" so e.g. "sechsundsechzig" becomes "sechsnsechzig" but this rather avoids the problem I mentioned (except for the backtracking).
9 und 60 vs. 9 hundert 60, if you speak quickly then the "ert" part of hundert is often swallowed, making it more difficult to discern between the remaining "hund" and "und".
The closest I can get to ambiguity by slurring "neunhundertsechzig" is "neun oder sechzig" or "neun, neununsechzig", never "neunundsechzig", and I have to make an effort to speak faster than I normally would even if I was reading out numbers in a hurry. I've also never run into this ("hundert" and "und" being mixed up) in my daily life, so I'm surprised to hear that this is something you hear often.
zwei und vierzig versus zwei hundert vierzig are radically different to my ears.
The counting thing is annoying but not as annoying as French numbers in my not so humble opinion. Though I guess English had it at one point with things like 4 score and 7 years ago (a score being 20 years, so 87 years ago)
Guess maybe I'm weird but outside of the "flip last two numbers around in your brain in German" it never struck me as much more than: Well that's weird, least its not french numbers under 100 where I have to add mentally so no big deal.
You don’t think of quatre-vingt dix as four-twenties ten, you just think of it as ninety just like in English.
I suspect the same is true even for native speakers, your brain is going to pretty quickly map to the actual number it represents rather than the arithmetic statement.
French numbers are the same way. If the only system you've ever used is a shitty system, the shitty system is the only logical way of doing things. Human brains are smart, but also dumb. That's actually the point of this article.
I am slowly training myself to intuit SI units, especially at work. It's better, and I know that, but it's fucking hard. I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to be able to replace it for cooking. It's just too deep. Probably the same as a Frenchman who learned to count in French. Learning to cook with standard units was coincident with learning to speak. You simply can't renovate those memories.
They're still bad systems though.