Similarly, in Old English, the normal basic suffix to form ordinal forms from cardinal numbers was "-þa", but sometimes it varied slightly. In Modern English, for most numbers, we just add the suffix "-th" to the cardinal form of the number to form an ordinal, as in "nine" - "ninth". All ordinal number forms followed weak declension, except for "ōðer ("second"), which was always strong. Ordinal numbers ( endebyrdlīcu ġetalu) are used to rank things in a particular order, like "first", "second", and "third". Hence 153 was hundtēontiġ and þrēo and fīftiġ (“a hundred and three-and-fifty”) and 1,153 was þūsend and hundtēontiġ and þrēo and fīftiġ, literally “a thousand and one hundred and three-and-fifty.” While the default order was " and " for the tens from twenty onwards, numerical word order was otherwise very much like modern English, with hundreds coming before tens. (“.ninety-nine, a hundred, a hundred and one.”). nigon and hundnigontiġ, hundtēontiġ, ān and hundtēontiġ. Hundtēontiġ was also the default expression for exactly one hundred and was used in the counting sequence. Meanwhile, hundtēontiġ was mainly used as an augend, as in fēoƿer and hundtēontiġ (“a hundred and four”) or hundtēontiġ and seofon and þrītiġ (“a hundred and thirty-seven”). There was apparently no discernible distinction between hund and hundred or when they were used, except that hund occurs seven times as often as hundred. Hund and hundred were mainly used as multiplicands, as in tƿā hund / tƿā hundred (“two hundred”). Old English had three words for “hundred”: hund, hundred, and hundtēontiġ. Numbers 20 and above usually have nouns in genitive case: "fifty feral hogs" is fīftiġ ƿildra sƿīna, literally "fifty of wild hogs." " So twenty-two was tƿā and tƿēntiġ, literally “two and twenty,” while sixty-nine was nigon and sixtiġ, literally “nine and sixty.” This structure is the same as in many modern, sister languages to English such as German. Oddly, the tens run past 100 and all the way up to 120, as if modern English had "tenty, eleventy, twelvety." Hence “100, 110, 120” in Old English was hundtēontiġ, hundendleftiġ, hundtƿelftiġ.įrom 21 to 129, non-round numbers were formed with the phrase " and. No one knows why this prefix starts with seventy, or why it's even there. The prefix hund- is attached to the tens seventy and above, so that “sixty, seventy, eighty” is sixtiġ, hundseofontiġ, hundeahtatiġ. However, that's where the morphology of these numbers stops being intuitive. The tens from 20 onwards were formed by combining a smaller numeral with -tiġ: “twenty” is tƿēntiġ (think tƿēġen-tiġ), “thirty” is þrītiġ ( *þrī-tiġ), “forty” is fēoƿertiġ ( *fēoƿer-tiġ), and so on, as if modern English had twoty, threety, fourty, fivety, etc. This had a tendency to happen only when they did not immediately precede the quantified noun: On þām mynstre ƿǣron fīf ġebrōðru oþþe sixe (“In the monastery were five monks or six ”). When they were declined, they followed the inflection of plural i-stem nouns: nominative/accusative -e, genitive -a, dative -um. The numbers from four ( fēoƿer) onwards usually weren't declined at all: Þā fēoƿer tīda sind ƿinter, lengten, sumer, and hærfest (“The four seasons are winter, spring, summer, and fall”), Ealle cattas sƿulton eahta sīðum (“All cats have died eight times”). In the other dialects, þrēo was the nominative/accusative form for all three genders. Note that the form þrī was only used in the West Saxon dialect. However, in prose, they often occurred with tƿā instead, especially in Late West Saxon prose, where tū was almost completely absent. In poetry, neuter nouns were usually used with tū. The declension of “two” was quite irregular:Īs can be seen from the table above, the neuter nominative/accusative could be either tƿā or tū. Note that ān could be declined weak and follow the noun, and when that happened, it had the meaning of "only", "alone", "no other than". Ān (“one”) was declined exactly like an ordinary strong adjective: Cardinal numbers ( hēafodġetalu) are used to count and enumerate things, like "one", "two", and "three".
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