this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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Growing up bilingual in German and English, can I just say german's "7 + 90" is pretty dumb too.
397 is 300 + 7 + 90: 100s 1s 10s. For bigger numbers you're doing it repeatedly.
In German for every set you're saying the digits and tens in the wrong order. You get used to it, but only if you grow up in Germany (I didn't), else it forever does you head in reading numbers.
Dutch also has that problem, it causes so many errors.
Old English used to have the same problem ( https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Old_English/Numbers ), but at one point they must have seen the light, probably some time after they were conquered by the french in 1066. I do remember reading a Charles Dickens story where a person said a number with tens and ones in the reverse order and I wonder when it finally died out completely in English (if it ever did, maybe it's still in use in some dialects).
Edit: thirteen, fourteen, ... There's still commonly used remnants of this reverse order in English, we'll never get rid of this insanity :)