Re: [tied] Why are "the teens" special ?

> I have heard, but cannot vouch for its veractiy, that Hindi has so eroded
> the original formation of its numerals, that most up to a hundred are
> opaque, and appear as single units that mean, for example, "37" or "82";
> and that this creates such problems for speakers, that many prefer to
> use English numerals even while speaking Hindi. (Can anyone confirm?)

It's true that Hindi and many other Modern Indo-Aryan languages have
unpredictable numerals up to 100. But I don't think it creates any
problems for speakers. If they use English numerals a lot that is
hardly surprising as they use English nouns a lot too. That unpredictable
numeral forms are somehow suboptimal or likely to be replaced/restructured
appears to be contradicted by looking at pidgins and creoles. More info
see http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~harald2/complexity_numerals_final.pdf

> list before, and may be in the archives. Personally, I find it curious
> that some languages reverse the order at a certain point in the teens :
> number +10, then 10+ number (e.g. French ...seize, dix-sept; Italian
> ...
> sedici, diciassette; but Latin ..sedecim, septindecim, duodeviginti).
> But that's probably an uninteresting question...

I don't know if it's uninteresting but the phenomenon is super-rare.
Hardly attested beyond the cases you mention!

H