LINGUISTIquips

Math majors out there will show some interest in this one: English vocabulary gives us some hints on it’s historical number system. And, interestingly, this whole business of dividing things in terms of ten may not have been an original feature.

Number systems like the one in English are regarded as “Base-10,” where 10 is an especially meaningful unit. For example, the addition of ten turns “twenty-two” into “thirty-two,” and number prefixes (“twenty,” “thirty,” “forty”) are always increments of ten. Historically, however, it would appear that English was different.

There are some other number systems commonly used in some areas of the Anglophone world. For example, hexadecimal (Base-16) is used often in computer programming, as is binary (Base-2). English, however, has hints at a Base-12 system somewhere in its past.

Consider the vocabulary of counting in English:

one,
two,
three,
four,
five,
six,
seven,
eight,
nine,
ten

As illustrated before, numbers generally are marked at tens; using numerals this marking is clear, as 1 is added in first position to make a so-called “teen”:

8,
9,
10,
11,
12,
13,
14

But herein lies the clue: consider the first two “teens”:

eleven,
twelve

The number “thirteen” is technically the first “teen.” However, in a purely Base-10 system, one would expect numbers like “Oneteen” and “Twoteen” instead of “eleven” and “twelve.”

What’s this mean? At some point in its history, English (at that time probably Indo-European) utilized a Base-12 system for its numbers. Sound far fetched? English isn’t alone.

Anyone who’s ever wondered about French’s weird number system (and other romance languages, for that matter) should take note: this is evidence of an old Base-20 system.

When one wants to say “eighty” in French, they say “quatre-vingt,” literally “four-twenty.” This is exactly what one would expect from a Base-20 system, which divides complex numbers into multiples of 20, not 10.

An equally strange Base-20 system may have existed in Scandinavian, as evidenced by Swedish numbering:

50 = halvtres
60 = tres

60 is “tres” (an old form of Indo-European 3) and 50 is, literally, “half-three.” But how is 50 half of 60? It’s not, but the difference between the two is half of 20, exactly what one would expect in a Base-20 system.

So, the next time any of you are in French class or otherwise and question the usefulness of a Base-20 vocabulary, consider this: it’s even harder to divide by 12.