• BillyClark@piefed.socialEnglish
    13·
    11 hours ago

    In England, “half six” would mean the same as “half past six” aka 6:30.

    And I’ve been doing this for years: If I “accidentally” get into the 10 items or fewer line with 11 items, I just tell myself it’s a “baker’s 10.” And, of course, 12 items is a “baker’s baker’s 10,” as we have no other name for 12.

    • Warl0k3@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      4 hours ago

      Reinventing church numerals as a rationalisation for grocery checkout hijinks - I absolutely love this.

      • BillyClark@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        4 hours ago

        I guess if I say that 1 is baker’s 0, and 2 is baker’s baker’s 0, then I’ve invented the baker’s unary base.

  • palordrolap@fedia.io
    41·
    14 hours ago

    “Half six” is fraught with peril. One slight misunderstanding and you’ll have Germans and Dutch at your door when you least expect it and a bunch more people an hour later.

      • Ekky@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        12·
        10 hours ago

        *Puts on glasses* Akchually, that’s only if you’re counting 10’s, since we count 1’s as decimal and 10’s in pairs of snes/snaes (20), hence fifty is half three snes or 3*20-0.5*20 = (3-0.5)*20 = 50.

        Or if you’re talking 1’s, aka. decimal, you’d just remove the snes part, since common math is in decimal anyway, so half 3 decimal would be 3*1-0.5*1 = 3-0.5 = 2.5.

        EDIT: Fun fact: 100, aka. “en hundrede/one hundred”, can therefore also be called “fems” or “fem snes/five snaes”. And then there’s the ones who actually say “in twenty” instead of “snes”, so it’d be “fem i tyvende”.

        • TimeRonin@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          4 hours ago

          I would really like to understand more, why do you simplify 320-0.520 as (3-0.5)*20? Is this system actually insightful into arithmetic? Is there a good tutorial about such and such?

          • Ekky@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            2·
            4 hours ago

            Well, it is just arithmetics.

            The left side of the equation is just the natural expansion of the paranthesis to signify and drive home the point that we’re specifically talking half off 20.

            The middle is how it’s usually represented and follows best practices. Aka. Simplifying the equation without touching the variables and constants.

            The right side is the result for calculating the equation.

            I’m unsure of any tutorials regarding the danish counting system, though there’s bound to be some. :)

            Did I misunderstand the question?

          • Ekky@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            7·
            12 hours ago

            Oh no, no game, that’s how you enable the dev tools in retro-future mode. :p

        • techt@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          10 hours ago

          puts on novelty slinky eye glasses

          Fascinating.

          Also, small thing:

          3*1 - 0.5*1 = 3 - 0.5 = 2.5 ----------------^

        • cooltrainer_frank@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          12 hours ago

          Det ved jeg godt :)

          But it’s fun to show that meme off. Danish numbers are wild. My bad danish gets me mistaken numbers all the time

          • Ekky@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            3·
            12 hours ago

            Tænkte det nok x)

            It’s just fun to blow some non-Danes’ minds every now and again. <3

            • NochMehrG@feddit.orgEnglish
              5·
              11 hours ago

              So that’s why Duolingo hides numbers from us! (And probably also why Danish people switch to English or German no matter if you start in Danish or not…)

    • Ghoelian@piefed.socialEnglish
      10·
      12 hours ago

      Can confirm this caused a lot of confusion for the 6 months i lived in the uk as a dutch person lol. Eventually we just ended up saying the numbers.

  • Ekky@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    5·
    13 hours ago

    Heh, reminds me of my national counting system where “halv seks” would mean 5,5. Aka. half before six, and not half of six. :P