[sagaro]

It is interesting how many languages originating in different parts of the world all somehow figured to have a base and name the numbers by base. For instance if you know 1 to 9. And then you know 10, 20, 30, 40... 90. And then 100, 200, 300... you will be able to say the numbers 57 (fifty, seven) or 69 (sixty nine) or 237 (two hundred, thirty, seven).

But all the languages under Indo-Iranian(https://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/channumerals/Indoeuro.htm) for instance Hindi (https://lingweb.eva.mpg.de/channumerals/Hindi.htm) have 1-100 as different numbers and then follow the base principle.

20 in Hindi is 'bis'. 2 is 'do'. But 22 is 'bais'. Know 30 and knowing 7 in Hindi or any of those Indo-Iranian language will not help you tell 37.

But knowing 100 and 37 will be enough to say 137 in those languages. 100 in hindi is ek sau. And 37 is 'senthis'. So you will be able to say 'ek sau senthis'.

It is fascinating that those languages chose to not follow base till 100 and then followed the base while naming their numbers.

[Lapha]

Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages are incredibly irregular, but when laid out on a chart it doesn't seem as daunting of a task as the initial prospect of learning 100 numerals for 0-100 would be. For example, if you know 22 is 'bais' and you know the tens place for thirty is 'tis' and sixty is 'sath' you can probably figure out what 'battis' and 'basath' are, although if you know 29 is 'untis' you won't be able to figure out what 'unsath' is from the examples provided in this post.

Irregularity isn't too uncommon though, just not to the same degree. Many Germanic languages have special words for eleven and twelve, with remnants of vigesimal are common throughout Europe. French and Danish were mentioned previously, with Danish having exceptions on top of that system. 23 being '3 and 20th' or 67 being '7 and 3 score' which makes sense, but 34 '3 and 30' and 45 '4 and 5 10s' breaking the rule, and numbers like 78 '8 and 3 score and half fourth score' really stretching the limits. The Celtic languages still use vigesimal and Breton at least has similar degrees of irregularity as Danish. Japanese numerals are also a mess, but that mostly stems from the differences in readings.

There's probably many more examples, but these are the ones that I can think of off the top of my head. The one notable exception being the Pirahã language, which has words for 'one' 'two' and 'many' and that's about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindustani_numerals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danish_language#Numerals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_numerals

[tragomaskhalos]

Reminiscent of Borges' story 'Funes the memorious', whose title character has a completely eidetic memory and invents his own number system where each number is its own distinct word or phrase - a system described rather beautifully (in the English translation) as 'a rhapsody of incoherent terms ... precisely the opposite of a system of numbers'

[unwind]

Cool! I think you had an unfortunate typo:

[...] will now help [...]

That should read "will not help", right? Else I'm even more confused than normal.

[sagaro]

Ah yes. "Not". Thanks for pointing out.

[simiones]

Isn't what you're describing for Hindi just base-100 numbers?

[sagaro]

That is an interesting way of looking at it. Kind of makes sense considering unlike western units, 100k in Hindi is "ek lakh". And in India, the numbers are expressed as xx,xx,xx,xxx. So 100 is sau (hundred), 1,000 is hazar (thousand) 1,00,000 is lakh (hundred thousand) 1,00,00,000 is crore (10 million)

Somehow the first split is 1000, then on every order of 100 gets a name. It sure is confusing, but there must be some reason to this.

[_a_a_a_]

erm, french is a bit weird on this IIRC.

[simiones]

Yes, French has some remnants of a base-20 system that was there in one of the languages that went before. Interestingly, this only manifests for numbers greater than 60; so while numbering from 0 to 60 looks mostly like in English, the numbers 60-79 are essentially "sixty - sixty-ten (70) - sixty-eleven(71) - sixty-nineteen(79)" (soixante un - soixante dix - soixante onze - soixante dix neuf), and then for 80-99 you have "four twenties - four-twenties-and-10 - four-twenties-and-99" (quatre vingt - quatre vingt dix - quatre vingt dix neuf).

Other European languages also have interesting numbering, such as Danish, with constructions such as 50 being "three less a half [twenties]" (halvtreds).

[rjsw]

There are dialects of French that don't use that numeral system, Swiss French uses septante, huitante, nonante for 70, 80, 90.