Counting by 10s vs. 20s

Amy West medievalist at W-STS.COM
Fri Aug 23 14:48:53 UTC 2013


On 8/23/13 12:03 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> My question is not really about how pure it is in
> French, nor where it arose and spread to.  But
> rather,*why*  did it arise?  Lost in prehistory,
> but that has never discouraged speculators.
>
> Joel
There are people who work on this, at least I know of people who study
the number system in Germanic languages (ON/OI and OE), so I'd bet there
are folks who study the medieval Romance systems as well, and I bet you
can find them if you poke around. However, there is likely no good
answer as to "why." Probably lots of hypotheses, though. . . .

---Amy West

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