On account of all the unfounded criticism of the Danish language and number system, I have decided to help any potential non-Scandinavians reading this thread who may be having trouble deciding on which of the Nordic languages they should chose to learn on account of being too lazy and stupid to learn all of them.

A guide to the Danish number system versus those other languages ~

NON-DANISH

'Ti' means ten and that is basically it. Twenty is two-ten, to-ti. Thirty is tree-ten, tre-ti, and so on and so forth all the way up to ninety. Pretty similar to the number system that you are already familiar with in your language of whores and merchants. A number system based on ten, really? Uh, we use our fingers to count with or whatever. Do you really want to let base biology dictate your number system? Whatever.

DANISH

An exciting, mysterious language and maybe slightly more convoluted so if you're a big babby watch out.

'Ti' still means ten. Stay calm. Twenty is 'tyve', but 'tyve' isn't always twenty, it can be ten, too. Thirty is 'tredieve', I shouldn't have to explain this. GOD! Anyway, that was the easy part.


Forty is fyrre, or more correct, fyrretyve. It sounds like 'four twenties', but it really means 'four tens'. An easy mistake to make if you should somehow be confused by the word 'tyve' now meaning 'ten' instead of 'twenty'. Idiot.

Fifty is halvtreds and sixty is treds. This may trip you up because 'halv' means 'half' and 'halfsixty' is not half as much as sixty. This is because halvtreds is short for haldtredsindstyvende. 'sind' is to multiply and 'tyvende' is a bunch of twenties. Remember how 'tyve' is twenty? Remember how 'tyve' is sometimes twenty? Well, it is now. Anyway, just forget about the number forty. Once you have forgotten about forty, then fifty, or 'halvtredsindstyvende', basically means 'three minus one half multiplied by twenty', and there you have it, fifty. Or as we call it in everyday Danish, halvtreds, halfsixty.

Sixty is 'treds' which is short for 'tredsindstyvende'. That means three times twenty. Uh, Danish is so hard. How do I multiply with twenty? Twenty is twice as much as ten and I only have ten fingers?? ~ A swede.

Next up is seventy which is 'halvfjerds', or as I am sure you have figured out, 'halvfjerdsindstyvende. If you're wondering how much a 'fjerds' is since 'halvfjerds' is apparently half a 'fjerds' then just stop. You're making things needlessly complicated. There is no such thing as 'fjerds' like there is a 'treds' to 'halvtreds' Don't just go making poo poo up. 'Halvfjerdsindstyvende' means 'four minus a half multiplied by twenty. Adds up to seventy, doesn't it? You're going to need 7 swedes to count this high.

Eighty is 'firs' or 'firsindstyvende, which means four times twenty. Remember forty? No? Well, good.

Ninenty is 'halvfems' for short and 'halvfemsindstyvende' all proper like. 'Halv' still means 'half' and 'fem' means five so we've got five minus a half, and you then multiply it by twenty because twenty is better than ten except when twenty is ten because of forty.

Easy.