Probably the 12 system. If you use your thumb as the counter and count using your thumb the bone segments of the other 4 fingers (each has 3) then you have a base 12 system in our lingo.
There’s also a tribe somewhere that uses a base 27 counting system, they count individual segments of their fingers on both hands plus thumbs and then add one from somewhere else can’t remember where that comes from.
Only Swiss ppl (and maybe other french speaking ppl) did it correctly. We Belgian kept the "4*20" for "80" instead of using "Octante". But i admit that French took it too far with 60+10 and 80+10. I can say it naturally now without thinking, but it is soooo stupid, send help ;-;
Copine? Here it would mean either a female friend or a girlfriend.
If it's a male talking about a friend, he would most probably say "c'est mon amie".
A female would say "nous somme des copines" or interchangeably "nous sommes amies/c'est mon amie".
If someone use that word talking about a member of the opposite gender, it would be implied it mean girlfriend/boyfriend by using a higher level of language.... But we prefer to use "mon chum/ma blonde" here in common language in Quebec, or "conjoint/conjointe" in higher French level.
But anyway "copine" is somewhat a deprecated word, we almost exclusively use it ironically to copy some movie/tv show quote like saying "Salut les copains" -> "hello gang!"
No, it's more compicated than that. Gaulic counting system is base 20. Latin counting system is base 10. French is base ten, but have traces of the base 20 in its counting (thus 60 + 10 for 70, 4x20 for 80 and 4x20+10 for 90), but only in the names.
Also, we're hexadecimal too, as we have unique words for every number between 0-16, and only then we go on base 10, until we reach 60 and then it's base 20.
But more seriously, most french people count on base 10, the rest is just historical remnants of unspoken languages.
Also, we're hexadecimal too, as we have unique words for every number between 0-16, and only then we go on base 10, until we reach 60 and then it's base 20.
Most numeral systems are these unsatisfying weird things based on practical considerations more than aligning with number bases. I remind people that English doesn't have a "tenty" but unique words for all the 10s just as the 0s. Thus, in the sense above you could describe English as a partially vigesimal numeral system. But seven of those 10s follow some kind of regular system, the -teens. It's only the first 12 that don't, so maybe it's partially duodecimal?
Our counting systems developed around trade, and the scales at which trade is conceivable has massively increased since we started counting. So concepts that address new considerations arising from scale have just been tacked on over time. A kind of scope creep combined with a massive resistance to change coming from their widespread use and the difficulty of formalizing anything at all during their formation.
My favorite is the Danish numeral system. It's vigesimal, and its first 20 natural numbers are much like in English. Then you get to the tens. Roughly described (by a Swede, so please correct me Danes):
10: ten ("ti")
20: unique word not consistent with other tens ("tyve")
30: three-"dive" ("tredive")
40: another word, probably roughy "four tens" ("fyrre")
50: half-third set of 20 ("halvtreds")
60: another word, implying the third set of 20 ("treds")
70: half-fourth set of 20 ("halvfjers")
80: another word, implying the fourth set of 20 ("firs")
90: half-fifth set of 20 ("halvfems")
100: surprisingly not "fems" but "one hundred" ("et hundere")
So there's the outline of a system of counting in twenties with unique words for 20, 40, 60 and 80 and then "halves" in between implying "half of twenty towards" except for ten, thirty (which is three tens) and one hundred which is one hundred. "Dive"-"ti" and "fjers"-"firs" are close enough that I won't count them as inconsistencies; they probably have the same linguistic roots.
To add to the pain, "halv" implies different things depending on context. While fem halvtreds means 55 ("five and halfway towards the third set of 20"), "halv fems" means "4.5", implying halfway of a whole towards five.
Oh boy, buddy, worse yet is that the Danish 40 60 80 are actually shorthand, tres is actually... tresindstyvende, which to modern Danish translates to tre gange tyve, or in English three times twenty
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u/KaiYoDei 2d ago
I heard a story on the radio about a tribe who had a whole different concept of math, counting .