Just a Number
So, uh, yeah. We have the same number system as everybody else, but we say the numbers a bit funny here in Denmark. Swedes and especially Norwegians love to make fun of that.
In case you’re wondering what numbers Denmark is saying it’s:
10 cows, 34 pigs, 52 chickens, 193 eggs, 261 nuts, which he then changes to 371 nuts.
Not even Danes will recognize these numbers the way I wrote them in English, but I was being an extreme pronunciation nazi and writing them almost exactly like they’re said in Danish.
The thing that really confuse our Northern neighbors is that with a number like 52 we don’t say “fifty two” but “two and fifty” which sounds like “two fifty”. And our word for fifty sounds like “half sixty” and 90 sounds like “half fives” and it just goes on like that.
You are allowed to be confused. And Norway had to put up with that for 300 years.
Norway Sweden Denmark
17th June 2010
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