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Comment by jimmaswell | Hacker News Reader

If you want something completely insane check out standard French. 97 is "quatre-vingt-dix-sept" which translates directly to "four-twenty-ten-seven". Quebec French does this sanely though at least.

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Sorry, but it’s also “quatre-vingt-dix-sept” here in Quebec. We do manage haha (it’s something you get used to / absorb as a native speaker, although it is of course a barrier for those learning the language)

You’re probably thinking of Belgium and Switzerland where 97 would be - as far as I understand - “nonante-sept”

See this other StackExchange on the topic (and geographical exceptions to the octante/huitante (!)/nonante usage): https://french.stackexchange.com/questions/187/quelles-parti...

Same in Catalan.

80 - vuitanta

That’s about as odd as the danish ”syv og halvfems” which is “seven and half five” meaning “seven and 4.5 twenties”, so 97.

Yes, the "halvfems", "half five", could be translated as "half of the fifth twenty", or even "halfway of the fifth twenty (from the full fourth one)".

Luckily it is only numbers 50 to 99 that work that way. 31 is simply "enogtredive", as in "one and three tens". A hundred is "hundred", not "fems", as it could be (five twenties).

Also, Belgians do that sanely too.

70: soixante-dix (FR) "sixty-ten". Septante (BE) is literally seventy (seven decades), which is much better.

And so on and so forth for 80 (octante in BE) and 90 (nonante).

Edit: fixed seventy

> 80 (octante in BE)

Nope. That’s switzerland, belgians completely illogically have kept the 20-based naming here.

Thanks the for correction.

So do Belgians do it 100% like the french? Or so they mix a bit of FR and CH?

The latter.

In Belgium (belgian french) we don't say "octante" for 80 (said in Switzerland maybe) but "quatre-vingts" (four twenty. 4-20). So 87 is said "quatre-vingt-sept" (four twenty seven). For 70 and 90 it is right.

Depends on the canton in Switzerland. To my knowledge most say “huitante” except for Geneva which says “quatre-vingt”.

Most people I know (from various Romand cantons) actually use both a bit randomly, I assume due to the strong French influence. What's funny is that they don't realise it until you point it out.

Octante as far as I know has been dead for a while and is not used anywhere, in Switzerland or elsewhere.

If your French is bad like mine you can get away with those even in France.

I hope my french is okay.

Four score and seven-ten years ago :)

No, it translates directly to "ninety-seven" or to however you spell "97" in any other language.

> Literal translation, direct translation or word-for-word translation, is a translation of a text done by translating each word separately, without looking at how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literal_translation

I only knew term #1 and term #3, thanks.

Let's prove that English is insane by making a literal translation of that Wikipedia definition in French:

> Littéral traduction, direct traduction ou mot-pour-mot traduction, est le traduction de un texte fait par traduire chaque mot séparément, sans regarder à comment le mots sont utilisé ensemble dans un phrase ou phrase.

I'm not sure what you're trying to show there. Literal translations are always janky but can still be used to demonstrate things.

A similar literal translation from english to english of 97 would be nine-tens-seven. English has some irregularities in the teens but it's decimal all the way through. French switches from decimal to vigesimal.

> I'm not sure what you're trying to show there. Literal translations are always janky but can still be used to demonstrate things.

I'm trying to show that using a method that can only produce nonsense out of a given source is not the best way to demonstrate/prove _anything_ about the source. At best, it proves that literal translation is garbage, which is something everyone knows (except at tech giants, apparently).

There is only one way to translate "quatre-vingt-dix-sept" in English while preserving its meaning: "ninety-seven".

Pointing out the decimal <-> vigesimal switch (and the historical debates around it, for example) or the fact that the two systems cohabit would be far more useful and interesting than constructing a strawman in order to conclude that a language is "insane".

A literal translation is the easiest way to show what happens. I don't see the problem.

If you perform the same literal translation to 57, it doesn't look "insane". When you say the method "can only produce nonsense", I think you're just flat-out wrong.

If you’re a native speaker I imagine that’s true, but if you learned the language later in live it remains a pain. I feel comfortable discussing love, art and politics in French but I still dread writing down a phone number!

This is so sweet. J’adore le français.

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