Why is the the first number after "ten" called "eleven", and not "oneteen"?

Question

And why is it "twelve" and not "twoteen"? Also, once you do get into the teens, it's "thirteen" instead of "threeteen", and "fifteen" instead of "fiveteen"?

Answer 1

On your main question - Why "eleven" and "twelve"?

"Eleven" goes back to Middle English "en-leven", whose first syllable is a relative of "an/ane" meaning "one", and the "tw-" of "twelve" gives away its connection to "two". So we can sort of see that these two have something to do with the system of counting by ten. In fact, the original meaning of these two words was "one left" and "two left" (after counting to ten).

Here's how it happened:
"What about the anomalous eleven and twelve? Why do we not say oneteen, twoteen along the same pattern as thirteen, fourteen, fifteen? Eleven in Old English is endleofan, and related forms in the various Germanic languages point back to an original Germanic *ainlif, "eleven." *Ainlif is composed of *ain-, "one," the same as our one, and the suffix *-lif from the Germanic root *lib-, "to adhere, remain, remain left over." Thus, eleven is literally "one-left" (over, that is, past ten), and twelve is "two-left" (over past ten)."
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dict.asp?Word=eleven

Finally, the reason "eleven" and "twelve" did not end up simply comforming to the "teen" pattern is that these were common, well-established forms. And it is precisely the common, everyday words that are LEAST likely to submit to "rules". (That's why the "irregular" past tense verb forms -- had, were, went, etc-- and irregular plural forms --men, mice, geese-- are almost always found with simple, common words.)

The habit of treating eleven and twelve differently is also related to the fact that speakers of Old and Middle English often GROUPED things by such units as twelves (as we still do to some extent, as seen in the alternate form "do-zen" [literally 'two-ten', compare German "zehn"] (Note that the use of twelve has ancient roots. See for example the Mesopotamian mathematical system, which used both six [and its double twelve] and ten --and gave us our 12 hours, 60 seconds, etc) That is NOT to say that these number names originated in counting by twelve, simply that the later USE of twelve contributed to the names' not being changed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal#Origin

About "thirteen" -- this comes from the same sort of change that turned Old English "thrid" (same order as "three") into "third" (and "brid" to "bird"). This sort of change in the order of the sounds of a word (linguists call it "metathesis") is common to human language, and usually happens because the NEW form is easier to say or is close to more familiar sound-patterns in the language.

"Fif-teen" (also "fif-ty"). It's the same difference as between "five and "fifth" -- note that /f/ and /v/ are closely related sounds, except that /v/ uses the voice. When the basic form (fif- or fiv-) is immediately followed by a sound that does NOT use the voice (as the /t/ of fifty and fifteen, and the /th/ of fifth), the f/v sound tends to also be spoken without the voice. This is another very common occurrence in human language (Another common English example -- the "s" at the end of "bits" has an s-sound [without the voice], but the "s" at the end of "bids" has a Z-sound [with the voice]).

As for the vowel sounds -- long /ee/ and short-i are actually, originally, closely related. The use of a 'long' or 'short' vowel, in Middle English, was related to thing like the accent on a syllable and whether the syllable was 'closed' (where the vowel is followed by a consonant) or 'open' (where the vowel was *originally* at the END of the syllable, as it clearly was in "three", and also in 'fi-ve' [the final -e, now silent, was then pronounced as an unaccented "uh"]).

Do recall that the changes in these forms took place over many centuries! It's not as it MODERN English stopped to re-invent its number system. It simply continued and adapted what it had inherited.

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Incidentally, the answer "that's just English" is not only unhelpful; it's untrue. When people say it, this simply indicates that THEY don't know how it came about. But, in fact, as I suggested above, the sorts of changes that gave us our English forms are the same sorts of changes that are COMMON in human speech.

Answer 2

I had a call one evening from a lady who wanted to know about her mother's medications. Three times I said, "I'm sorry, but you need to talk to with a pharmacist. This is a private home, not a pharmacy." The third time she got mad at me, wondering why I wouldn't answer her questions or put her through to the pharmacist. I once again, patiently, explained she had the wrong number. She yelled at me and hung up. The only reason I didn't hang up on my second attempt is that I knew the meds she was asking about and knew she REALLY needed to talk a pharmacist. sigh..that's what you get for being nice I guess...

Answer 3

i once asked a math teacher a similar question; "why are there 360 degrees in a circle?". his response was, "why do we call two two and not seven?" which i thought was pretty clever. as far as "fiveteen", the forms that are in place are easier to pronounce.

Answer 4

People used to have 12 fingers so they had unique numbers up to 12.

Answer 5

12 planets. It is Latin. maybe 11 planets now, but I still say Pluto is a full fledged planetary object.

Answer 6

derivation from latin roots look it up