this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
771 points (98.0% liked)

Europe

8484 readers
1 users here now

News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe 🇪🇺

(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, 🇩🇪 ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures

Rules

(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)

  1. Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
  2. No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
  3. No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.

Also check out !yurop@lemm.ee

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] thekidxp@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair English has a lot of German. The "teen" sound almost certainly comes from the sound "zehn". It's pretty easy to hear how fünfzehn und sechszehn eventually become fifteen and sixteen. We're more or less saying five ten just kinda mushed together.

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

More accurately, modern English and German come from the same root. A Proto-Germanic word for 15 developed into "fünfzehn" in German and "fifteen" in English.