Why do we say eleven and twelve, and first, second and third?
Why do we say eleven and twelve? All languages have words for the numbers one to ten. However, a large number of languages then go on to count the numbers after ten by saying number plus ten. So, for example, in Chinese twelve is Shí’èr, which is written as 十二. 十 is the character for ten and 二 is the character for two. English doesn’t do this. We have eleven and twelve before we start following the pattern by having thirteen (three ten), fourteen (four ten) and so on.
Eleven and twelve come from the old English words endleofan and twelf. You can see how the pronunciation is close to eleven and twelve. These words came into English from the old German words ainlif and twalif. “Lif” meant “to leave” and “ain” and “twa” have become “ein” and “zwei” in German, meaning one and two. So, ainlif meant one left over and twalif meant two left over. Two left over from what? Two left over from ten.
In that case, shouldn’t we say, thrilif? The reason that we don’t probably comes down to usage. Early people wouldn’t have needed to count very high and they would have used the lower numbers in their daily life. Early civilizations developed a base 12 counting system and that had carried over into Europe in such things as the months, and the hours. There were also 12 Olympic gods and 12 sons of Odin. You can see that 12 was important because we count things in 12s. A dozen is 12 and a gross is a dozen dozens. We used the numbers one to twelve so much that they became numbers in their own rights. We didn’t use the numbers from thirteen on so much, so they stayed as three ten, and so on.
Why do we say first, second, and third? There are two types of numbers that we use to count. We have the cardinal numbers, which are one, two, three, and so on. Then we have the ordinal numbers, which are first, second, third, fourth, and so on. For every single ordinal number after three, we put “th” after the number to make the ordinal. This is because in old German and in old English, the ordinal form of the number was made by adding “tha” to the cardinal number. We have simply kept this. So, why are first, second, and third different? The reason is down to use and to the fact that they probably predated the ordinal system.
The word “first” came from the German word “furisto.” “Fur” meant “before” or “preceding”, and “furisto” was the superlative of that. The word meant more than just the ordinal version of “one”, as it still does today. We say “first aid” and “first hand”. When the word came in to English it was “first” and it was used before people could count or before people needed other ordinals.
After “first”, old English used “other”. The only real need was to differentiate between what came first and what didn’t. In the 14th century, English took the word “second” from French and started to use it. The word came from the Latin “secundus,” which meant “following”. No one had ever needed to say “twoth” because the idea of second was simply what came after first.
The word “third” came from German as well as “first”, Here, the word has followed the rule, but only in German. When the word came into old English, it was “thridda”, which was a combination of the old German “thri” for three and the “tha” suffix which turned it into an ordinal number. The “tha” was pronounced as a “d”. The word came into English and then, in the 16th century, the i and the r were inverted to make “third”.
We have many other numbers in English that are exceptions. The most likely reason is that we used these numbers far more than others, which caused them to evolve. The word “hundred” is a good example. It is an interesting word because “hund” means 100 and “red” means “to count”. So, the word hundred means “a count of 100”. This is why we can’t use it the way we use the other numbers. You can say “there are seven cats.” You can say “there are ninety-nine cats”. But, you cannot say “there are hundred cats.” You must say, “there are a hundred cats” because it is a noun. You can say “a few hundred”, “several hundred”, or “many hundreds of”, but you can’t say, “a few sevens,” “several sevens”, or “many sevens of”. Interesting. And this is what I learned today.
Photo by DS stories: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photograph-of-medals-on-white-shapes-7267573/
Sources
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/76007/why-it-eleven-twelve-instead-oneteen-twoteen
https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-fir1.htm
http://www.word-detective.com/2014/07/first-second-third/