• Tuuktuuk@piefed.europe.pub
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    9 hours ago

    Ein, zwei, drei, fire, funf, sechs, seben, acht, neun, zein, elf, zwolf, dreizein…

    One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen…

    Yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä, viisi, kuusi, seitsemän, kahdeksan, yhdeksän, kymmenen, yksitoista, kaksitoista, kolmetoista…

    (though, notice that our words for “eight” and “nine” are derived from those for “two” and “one”. We used base 8 before migrating to Europe and applying the local standard. Then it was "two left until the new ten and “one left until the new ten
    With base 8 you can use your fingers to count up to 24 because you can use your thumbs for marking the “tens”. Or to 32, but that already takes a little bit of an effort because from my perspective your left thumb is on the right.)

    But yeah, base 10 is the worst. 12 can be divided by 3 without problems. And base 8 allows counting far higher with just fingers.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Still better than Danish…

      /s

      But yeah thanks! When I saw it was Finns I checked the Danes because they’re always doing their own thing, they go by 20s, so tens alternate “half 20s”.