931: Number-Arrangement Jun 27, 2017

Above the number twelve, all numbers in English are a combination of different numbers raised to multiples of ten, e.g. four-hundred-thirty is four times ten raised to the power of two, plus three times ten raised to the power of one. Almost all numbers in English are said with the highest place first, and then all smaller values next. The exception to this is with the -teens: thirteen through nineteen. While those terms no longer contain the word 'ten', the ending '-teen' used to be just that, so fourteen would be, in essence, like 'four-ten'; notably however 'forty' would as well. This style of forming cardinal numbers, by putting the number in the ones place first, is increasingly rare in Modern English, but in Old English and Middle English it was quite common, or even standard to form number like this, such as the line in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: "Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye" ("Some nine and twenty in a company") meaning 'twenty-nine' as we would say now. In German, and plenty of other languages, this is still the way that numbers are formed, such as "ninety-nine balloons" which is "neunundneunzig luftballons" (a famous song released in 1983), literally "nine and ninety".