I saw a question on the Internet asking why isn\u2019t the number 11 pronounced onety-one?
I\u2019ve heard that many times before and always considered it what it is \u2014 a joke, not a serious question.\u00a0
But since it\u2019s a slow day, I thought I\u2019d ponder it a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The question actually should be, why do we say eleven and twelve instead of firsteen and secondteen? After ten, it\u2019s the \u201cteens\u201d all the way up to twenty. The next number after twelve is thirteen \u2014 the third teen, then fourteen, the fourth teen, and so on. So why skip the first two and name them eleven and twelve?\u00a0
Well, our counting system is based on ten. The terms twenty, thirty, etc. are derived from compound words meaning \u201ctwo tens,\u201d three tens,\u201d etc. I suppose there wasn\u2019t a need for \u201cone ten\u201d because there was already the word \u201cten.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So maybe the real question is why do we have this odd set of numbers from eleven to nineteen? Really the numbers thirteen to nineteen aren\u2019t that odd because they mean three and ten, four and ten, and so on. They\u2019re kind of in a reverse order to numbers like twenty three, but the principle is the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that eleven and twelve is still a puzzlement. During my extensive research, I turned to the dictionary and found that eleven comes from Old English endleofan that literally means \u201cone left.\u201d Twelve comes from Old English twelf, meaning \u201ctwo left.\u201d
I\u2019m not sure how this all fits together, but maybe it goes back to people using their fingers to count. If you count something using your fingers, and get all the way up to ten and there\u2019s one thing left over, that\u2019s eleven \u2014 if you have two things left over \u2014 twelve.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I really con\u2019t know how eleven and twelve got their names in our numbering system. Maybe people just started using them and they became part of our language\/numbers \u2014 sometimes that\u2019s just the way things happen\u2026\u2026
\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I saw a question on the Internet asking why isn\u2019t the number 11 pronounced onety-one?I\u2019ve heard that many times before and always considered it what it is \u2014 a joke, not a serious question.\u00a0But since it\u2019s a slow day, I … Continue reading