Why are the teens written out backwards as the rest of the numbers? such as fourteen vs teenlyfour?

in my last question I asked about why some of the teen numbers wheren't spelled in the same manor as the other teen numbers. and I got a good answer to that.


still in all the other numbers the multiple of ten is a prefix to the one's space just like it's written in numerical form. yet in the teens it's a postfix.


22 twentytwo


10*2 1*2


16 sixteen


1*6 1*10

Why are the teens written out backwards as the rest of the numbers? such as fourteen vs teenlyfour?
the words for the numbers 1 through 19 are among the oldest words in the language. The rules for numeration had not been made when the words were invented. You will find that in most languages at least the lower "teen" numbers, 11, 12, 13, 14 and even 15 have special words to describe them. Some languages have special words for up to 20. This is because in earlier times, counting only went up to a certain number and after that, the amount was considered "many" or "countless." It didn't matter much if there were 45 deer or 62 to hunt, because just one would feed the tribe that night. But it might matter if there were 7 lions or 14 to avoid, so those numbers were invented.


These examples I just made up; they aren't definitive, but I think you can see how they may illustrate what probably happened.
Reply:Because thay are special!

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