The Hex

I was once so prolific at blogging. Then I had to mark final exams and get ready to move out of the country, which ate up nearly all of my time. So if you'll excuse me, this will be quick. I was watching the 1943 Danish film Vredens Dag (Day of Wrath) directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. I thought overall it was quite excellent, and I even learned a bit of Danish too. The plot has a lot to do with accusing people of witchcraft, so they mention the word for "witch" a lot, which is heks. I thought this sounded a lot like the English word "hex," so I looked into the etymology to see if there was any relationship.

I read the word history from the Free Dictionary's website, and it turns out I was right about the relationship, though our word "hex" actually came more directly from German (where the word is hexe) and was borrowed into English from German and Swiss immigrants to Pennsylvania, back when it was a British colony in the 17th and 18th century.

So it's from this that I also ultimately learned the phrase: Min hustru er ikke en heks--my wife is not a witch. It should come in handy the next time we find ourselves in medieval Denmark and accused of witchcraft.

Language Learning for Better Dental Hygeine

While brushing my four-year old's teeth we've started reviewing how to count to ten in a few different languages. The way it works is this. I divide his mouth into six sections: bottom back left, bottom back right, bottom back front, and then the same for the top of his mouth. As he brushes each section, I count to ten in a different language of his choice. Once I get to ten we move on to a different part of his mouth, and I count to ten in a new language.

So for instance, we usually start in English, so we count to ten while doing the bottom back left section. I ask him what he wants to do next. It might be Spanish, so I say "uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez" while he brushes the next part. Then we continue maybe in Hungarian, "egy, kettő, három, négy, őt, hat, hét, nyolc, kilenc, tíz." Next might be German, "eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn." We might continue with Slovak, "jeden, dva, tri, štyri, päť, šesť, sedem, osem, deväť, desať," and finish in Danish, "en, to, tre, fire, fem, seks, syv, otte, ni, ti."

The other day we were doing this, and I was counting in Slovak. I paused for a moment after saying the number three, and my son immediately jumped in and said "štyri," which I thought was very cool. It showed that he was paying attention and learning.

My wife points out that we should probably be brushing a little bit longer and should count to fifteen. I suppose that means I need to learn how to count higher than ten in Slovak and Danish.

Counting by Twenty

I recently reviewed how to count in Danish, and it uses a fairly unique system. In pretty much every language I've learned, multiples of ten are usually based on the other factor. That is, 2 times 10 is twenty, which is clearly based on the number "two." In Spanish, 4 x 10 is cuarenta, which is clearly based on the number "cuatro," and so on. Danish is unique in that numbers starting with fifty are based on multiples of 20, not 10.

20 tyve
50 halvtreds
60 tres
70 halvfjerds
80 firs
90 halvfems

Starting with 50, "halvtreds" is an abbreviation for "halv tred sinds tyve," where "halv tred" means 2.5 (though literally "half three", or one half less than three), "sinds" means "times" (as in to multiply), and "tyve" is twenty. So the number 50, instead of being based on 5 * 10 is actually based on 2.5 * 20.

Likewise, "tres" which is 60 is an abbreviation for "tre sinds tyve," which we've already established means 3 * 20.

The number four in Danish is "fire," and "halvfjerds" (70) is an abbreviation for "halv fire sinds tyve", or one half less than four (3.5) times 20, or simply 3.5 * 20 = 70. The number 80 is then simply "fire sinds tyve," or 4 * 20.

Finally, five is "fem." We should all see the pattern by now. One half less than five (halv fem) is four and a half. Multiply that times 20 and we get 90.

I was curious to see if this system of counting occurred in the other North Germanic, or Scandinavian languages. You can see what I found in Table 1.

Table 1. Comparison of numbers in Scandinavian languages

   
So clearly, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic all use the system where they multiple by ten. Faroese, the language spoken in the Faroe Islands which are a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, appears to use both systems. It also has the fewest speakers of all the North Germanic languages, making it hard to find a lot of written information on why it has two sets of numbers and when each are used.

If anyone is interested, I found this article on mentalfloss.com which discusses some other unique counting systems.