[jazzyb]

I don't understand how the author is judging complexity. The top one, Huli, is a base-15 number system but looks quite regular otherwise. French, on the other hand, switches from a base-10 to a base-20 at 80 and then switches things up at 97.

According to the listing, Welsh sits somewhere between these two but it has separate numbering systems for {20s, 40s, 60s, 80s}, {30s, 70s, 90s}, and {50s}. That seems much more complicated than either Huli or French.

[panglott]

Putting Japanese at such a low complexity shows a lot about the author's criteria and bias.

Japanese numerals are quite easy, but when it comes to actually counting things, it is quite complex. There are two series of numeral words that are used in different contexts, as well as dozens of counter words that pair with a variety of semantic categories. Many combinations or number + noun have quite irregular combinations, like "hatachi" (20 years of age) or "hatsuka" (20th day of the month).

[osdiab]

Yeah, I was definitely thinking that Japanese counting is way more complex than Chinese counting.

[Jtsummers]

Huli seems to change (though using a common root?) the words for the small numbers (like 1, 2, 3) when they get applied to how many 15s have been counted. "one fifteen" is "nguira ni", where does "ni" come from? "two fifteen" is "ngui ki", "ki" from "kira", why'd "nguira" abbreviated?

It's regular in construction, but the words change and drop parts of the basic number without a particular pattern (as an outsider to the language). "kira" -> "ki" makes sense. "duria" -> "dauni" -> "dau" kind of makes sense, but adds an extra letter (how does the sound actually change?). "tebira" -> "tebone" -> "tebo". A pattern is forming. Drop the "r-" and replace it with an "n-" (except for some) and later drop the "n-".

[gkya]

In french it's base ten only. AFAIK it's just the names, particularly in France, that are a bit confusing. I don't think francophones think of quatre-vingts as 20 20 20 20, but as 80. Just like english is not base-12 because its eleven and twelve, and not oneteen and twoteen.

[andreareina]

Just the names doesn't account for 80 + 10, 80 + 11, ..., 80 + 19.

[gkya]

Isn't it like quatre-vingts and ten, eleven, etc?

[jacobolus]

97 is pronounced like "four-score-ten-seven".

[jacobolus]

Who is downvoting this, and why? Quatre-vingt-dix-sept is literally the French version of four-score-ten-seven.

[kzrdude]

but with notes:

- quatre-vingt is the name for 80 - dix-sept is the name for 17

so we could also say it's eighty-seventeen.

[ambicapter]

quatre-vingt, quatre-vingt-un, quatre-vingt-deux,...,quatre-vingt-dix, quatre-vingt-onze, quatre-vingt-douze,...quatre-vingt-dix-neuf, cent,...

[Robin_Message]

Also, Swiss French, which has proper words for seventy and ninety, is considered more complex than French French, even though I'd consider having specific words simpler (especially given the complexity of 97 (which is said as 4 x 20 + 10 + 7)

[stromgo]

Did you interpret the table backwards? Swiss French is considered simpler:

  1. (most complex)
  19. French
  33. Swiss French
  69. (simplest)

[Robin_Message]

Yes, yes I did! Thanks, that makes a lot more sense!

[oblio]

67 isn't much better, either. It's 60 + 10 + 7.

[Coincoin]

Also, number triads ending in 1 or 11 smaller than 80 need an 'and' conjunction. And numbers ending in 1 need to concord in gender. What a mess.

Before the 1990s there were also all sort of over-complicated hyphen rules. Thank god it's now simpler; hyphens everywhere.

[davedunkin]

77?

[oblio]

Yes, 77, you're right. I can't edit the comment anymore :(

See what happens when you're used to a saner numbering system? I always hear "soixante ..." and my brain goes "6... something" :p

[nextstep]

I think it’s implied that base-10 is lowest complexity (this page is for English speakers) and I think that is why base-15 is more “complex” than the weird French system which is mostly addition of base-10 primitives.

[yorwba]

Huli appears regular, but a construction like "ngui ki, ngui tebone-gonaga tebira" to mean "fifteen twos and the three of the third fifteen" does seem like quite a mouthful for 33.

[jstanley]

It's not "fifteen twos" but "two fifteens".

They're just counting how many fifteens they've got: "two complete fifteens, and 3 from the third fifteen"

[abhishekjha]

Is the complexity based on pronunciation here?

[dingo_bat]

Agreed. Hindi is ranked 4th most difficult but the system is identical to English (rank 41). Just the symbols for the digits are different. Even they are similar looking!

[Manishearth]

Hindi/Marathi are not easy, you almost have to memorize the numbers 1-100.

Hindi and Marathi both have dedicated names for the tens (11, 12, 13, ...) and after that numbers are named in the reverse order of their digits. E.g. 45 will be five - forty.

_except_ the word for five will be different from the word for five in, say, 75. Similarly, the word for "fifty" in the fifties is different for many of them.

There's a lot of variation which you basically don't realize if you speak these languages natively, the variation can't be boxed into "rules" to make it easy to learn, and the end result is that you just end up implicitly memorizing it.

It's hard to realize because you basically end up modeling this subconsciously as there being multiple ways to say "five" and multiple ways to say "seventy", so the numbers seem to be following a fixed scheme, but in reality you've learned which synonym to use where.

In fact when folks talk about french numbers being weird and complex, this is often the counterexample I give.

I suspect this complexity arose from having synonyms for numbers which eventually randomly settled down, and also from having sandhi (rules for melding words together) which got corrupted over time, leading to things like "tay/ees" vs "chau/bees"

The website probably should have used the "different form"/"different word" thing it did for English. But note that the site did consider "twelve" to be its own number, not 10 + 2, which is basically what's happening here too, just extended 1-100.

[dingo_bat]

> Hindi and Marathi both have dedicated names for the tens (11, 12, 13, ...)

Same deal with English.

> and after that numbers are named in the reverse order of their digits. E.g. 45 will be five - forty.

Which is similar in complexity to English, just the order of speaking is reversed.

> _except_ the word for five will be different from the word for five in, say, 75. Similarly, the word for "fifty" in the fifties is different for many of them.

Now I realize what you're saying. It seems that I have memorized every number. Because I never thought of this.

[Manishearth]

> Same deal with English.

>

> Which is similar in complexity to English, just the order of speaking is reversed.

Yes, I was mentioning these to paint an accurate picture, not to contrast with English :)

-----

As a native Marathi / nonnative Hindi speaker, I can tell you that the Hindi numbers are pretty hard to get, and took me forever to get used to, even though the variations are almost the same as the ones Marathi has.

(However if you asked me about Marathi I'd have the exact same response as you, "what complexity? oh wait I see I've memorized everything oops")

[nileshtrivedi]

Not at all. As an example, consider how 55 and 57 are pronounced. "PachPAN"and "SattaVAN". The components have changed arbitrarily for no reason. 70 is "Sattar" but 71 becomes "IkHattar". 2 is "Do", but 12,22,32 use "Ba" as the prefix. Plenty more cases like this.

Compare this to "Fifty five" and "Fifty seven".

[abhishekjha]

I noticed that Hindi hasn't been represented by its own script in the 'Number' column which it should.

http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/ts/language/number/hindi.html

[kra3]

That, is the problem with transliterating into English. Otherwise it is quite staight forward (even the pronunciation). Also, language's ability to conjugate words has to be considered. Languages branching from sanskrit,

[jgh]

yeah came here to say this. Huli seems to be pretty much the same as english except base-15 instead of base-10. It even has the special case of the second 10 or 15 being different in form from the rest of the numbers.

edit: actually it seems like the Huli system is more uniform than English. It doesn't switch up the word order after 15. So it's "15 and 1 ..." whereas english goes "3 and 10.." and then "2x10 and 1..."

[DonaldFisk]

French spoken in Belgium and Switzerland has 70 = septante and 90 = nonante. In parts of Switzerland, 80 = huitante.

[bassman9000]

He clearly states it's his opinion. E.g. mandarin is one of the least complex for him, and yet

http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/ts/language/number/mandarin.html