2007-04-03 01:12:01 · 11 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Mathematics
Why is break not rhymed with freak?
Invent your language and have other bozos join you so you could say Onety-One all day long.
Please give me best answer thanks!
2007-04-03 03:26:52 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
That does not have to do with mathematics. it's a linguistic issue.
First of all, if there wasn't eleven it would be pronounced oneteen, not onety one!
Why it isn't pronounced oneteen? Let's take an example, fifteen. The word is made up from fifth- and -teen. Now because eleven should be first- & -teen, the result would be firsteen, which couldn't be pronounced in old times. So they changed it into eleven, completely irrelevant to oneteen or onety one.
The same thing happened for twelve (secondteen?)
2007-04-03 01:21:58 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
I suspect "teens" have their roots in specifying numbers like "five and ten" .. which one can imagine corrupting to "fifteen".
one and ten .. onten ..might possibly corrupt to eleven, but I am guessing that there are some older (saxon?) words that show a clearer path.
twelve is more of a mystery .. I don't really see where that came from at all, except that 12 was a counting base and there would ahve to have been some words if only chosen arbitrarily to fit eleven and twelve.
but 14 was also a counting base (e.g. pounds in a stone) .. so the more interesting question might be why was there no analogous name for thirteen?
2007-04-03 01:36:01 · answer #3 · answered by hustolemyname 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I never thought about onety one, twoty five, or threetyseven; but I did wonder, seven years ago, why we started saying 'two thousand' instead of 'twenty hundred'. Now it seems we are beginning to go back to the conventional technique for naming years, and people have once again started saying 'twenty o seven'.
2007-04-03 01:17:46 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
Probably because in addition to the decimal system there's a system of counting in dozens. So, up to twelve the number of tens are not mentioned, and the number does not end with 'teen'.
2007-04-03 01:19:23 · answer #5 · answered by Amit Y 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Because we would have to rename all the teens.
Onety Two
Onety Three
Onety Four
Onety Five
etc.
Twoteen and Oneteen sound like better counterparts.
2007-04-03 01:17:02 · answer #6 · answered by Cuddly Lez 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Haven't a clue, why do we call all the other number's what we do???
2007-04-03 01:24:21 · answer #7 · answered by Bignips 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Because Cheech Marin didn't name it?
2007-04-03 01:16:57 · answer #8 · answered by dlfield 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
because it called ELEVEN
2007-04-03 01:26:51 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
because its not
2007-04-03 01:16:21 · answer #10 · answered by oneguy21 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋