13 as

[S Krishna]

 Jakub Cejka  writes:
>> 
 
>
>I know this remark has not much to do with the discussion, yet I find it
>interesting that:
>
>Many people in India actually do often say "one three" for thirteen (e.g.
>as an answer to "How much is it"), perhaps to make it distinct from thirty
>(which distinction is not clear in the pronunciation of many)
>
>
>Btw:
>Recently, I saw kids in one family learning numerals. With beautiful
>(almost mantra-like :-) intonation they were repeating to learn by heart:
>
>"five three fifty three, three four thirty four" etc. for hours long.
>(May be this is common elsewhere too, but I never learned numbers like
>that)
    This is really interesting! The only place where I've heard ADULTS
do this is while playing "tambOla", a game where you get a piece
of paper with certain numbers on it , a person sits on a stage and
calls out numbers which you cross out if they appear in your list
...This continues until somebody crosses all his numbers and collects
the prize......It is NOT UNCOMMON to hear numbers being read out as
"TWENTY and ONE = TWENTYONE" "DOUBLE ONE= ELEVEN".
   My experience has been that in India, people are taught to read out
the numbers individually  AFTER the decimal point i.e. 25.13 would be read  out 
as "twenty five point one three" as opposed to the USofA where it is read out as 
"twenny five point thirteen". This seems to
be more or less universally valid.
  As an interesting aside, Dennis Mitchell( of "Dennis the Menace" fame) seems 
to be counting numbers like the above mentioned kids:
"One hundred one ten one, one hundred twelveteen, one hundred one ten
three....one hundred, twenty oneteen....Joey! you gotta One hundred
twenty twoteen marbles";-);-). Can we therefore call this method of 
counting "Dennisque"?
Krishna




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