Female, and I am sure there hides a boomer joke here
Just wait until you look into French numbers.
How different languages say 97:
🇬🇧: 90+7 (ok, there is some jank in English numbers - 13-19 are in line with the Germanic pronunciation, i.e. pronounced “right to left”, as a weird hold-over from the more Germanic Old English)
🇪🇸: 90+7
🇩🇪: 7+90
🇫🇷: 4x20+10+7
And if you think that’s bad, the Danes actually make the French look sane…
🇩🇰: 7+(-½+5)x20
Even Danes generally don’t really know why their numbers are like that, they just remember and go along with it.
what the actual fuck is wrong with you, denmark?
That’s not real. I refuse to believe that.
It is, but we just say seven and half fives these days. Everybody knows the twenty are implied…
While learning Danish I figured out that’s just the arcane incantation for the number. It’s language juju, and you just have to know that it be like it do. Yes, it’s syv og halvfems, but the reason behind it doesn’t matter anymore. The rest of the double digit numbers are a mess as well; 30 is tredive (three tens in old norse) but starting with 50 it’s this weird score (20) and half-to-score system.
When I first started learning my brain was desperately trying to make heads or tails of it and rationalize it somehow. And then I realized that was stupid, abandoned reason, and now I just utter these backwards ass numbers and we all nod and everyone is happy lol. Language is weird.
You know everytime your mention French number, there is always belgian or Swiss who will tell you :
🇧🇪🇨🇭: 90+7
☝️🤓
I think Finnish would be
🇫🇮: 9•10+7
Nine-tens seven
Same for Japanese
🇯🇵: 9•10+7
九(kyuu) 十(juu) 七(nana)
Also, similar to English, 20 does not follow the pattern but instead has its own word. (Still written as 2•10 though)
Me speaking to a French guy last week -
“We’ve just been the the musée de l’automobile in Mulhouse”
“Sorry, where?”
“Mulhouse”
“Where?”
“Mulhouse”
"Aaaaaah I see! It’s pronounced [pronounces Mulhouse *exactly the same FUCKING way I just pronounced it]
😂 Happens very regularly
To add to what that other person said, when you grow up your brain gets used to hearing the sounds common to your accent and you can even stop hearing the difference between certain sounds when someone speaks your language with a different accent!
In Quebec french there’s a big difference between the sound of “pré” and “prè” that doesn’t exist with some of the french accents in France and they’re unable to recreate that difference and might even be unable to hear it!
“Pré” and “prè” consistently sound distinctly different in most, dare I say almost all, accents in mainland France. The difference is the same with basically all words spelled with those vowels. “Ê” also sounds like a long “è” in most words for most people. “e” also sounds like “é” when before silent letters except for “t”, and sounds like “è” when before multiple letters or before “x” or before silent “t” or if it’s the last sound except for open monosyllabic words, and it sounds special or is silent elsewhere. “-ent” is always silent too. Obviously doesn’t apply to “en/em”, also special exception for “-er/-es”.
This video wouldn’t exist with the Quebecois accent because the three words wouldn’t be considered homonyms.
The vowel sounds in “près” and “pré” are very clearly different, and the sound in “prêt” changes from “è” to “é” when in liaison because it always sounds like “è” at the end of words (and separately, in closed syllables) and always sounds like “é” in open syllables otherwise (liaison triggers a change in the syllable structure which changes the vowel here). This does not contradict what I said. You said “(pr)é” and “(pr)è” sound the same, nothing about “(pr)ê”.
Just because your ears can’t hear a difference doesn’t mean that there is none. I deal with this a lot when Japanese ask me for help and can’t differentiate between certain sounds
Yeah in Japanese a few consonant sounds like ‘r’ and ‘l’ sounds or ‘h’/‘f’ or ‘s’/‘th’ or ‘z’/‘ð’ are basically heard as the same (an American ‘r’ might even sound like a weird ‘w’ to Japanese), and English has around 17 to 24 distinctive vowel sounds generally (based on quality) while Japanese has 5 plus vowel length and tones (pitch accent). As a result of the phonetic differences between the languages, it can be hard to hear or recreate the differences in sound quality (especially when it’s Japanese on the speaking/listening end, but Americans also sure have a terrible time trying to make Japanese sounds like the “n” or “r” or “ch”/“j” or “sh”/“zh” or “f” or “u”. they just perceive it as the same as the closest sounds in English)
In my experience, only God can hear the difference between Polish “dż” and “dź” / “cz” and “ć” (and the others)…
