Comment on Fucking hell
nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day agoThis is making my brain hurt. I need to try reading a few more times but, if I am understanding it correctly, the old Danish way of saying it is mathematically incorrect?
Half-to-five == 2.5
2.5*20 == 50
…
Did I read that correctly?
I’m not Danish, but I think he meant 4.5 instead of 2.5. It’s like halfway from 4 to 5, not from 0 to 5.
A similar word exists in Finnish too, when going from 1 to 2: “puolitoista” translates to “half second”, like halfway to the second number, and is commonly used to refer to 1.5, BUT without any multiplication shenanigans.
Correct.
And so on. You might notice that I sometimes write it like “halvfemte” and other times “halvfems”. The latter is just the way it was spelled when used in a combined word (another fun quirk in Danish that we inherited from Germanic this time!). 90 is today spelled just “halvfems”.
AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
I think it means half less than 5, or 4.5
match@pawb.social 19 hours ago
for no particular reason, in English, 5:30 can be said as “half past 5” but never “half until 6”. (but “five thirty” is still more common)
tamal3@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Quarter-past the hour, and quarter-till, are still common. Though perhaps less common as we move towards digital clocks.