So I had an aha moment the other day while in Amsterdam. I was talking with a new friend about the Dutch language and he said something that really made me stop and think. For all my life (well, for as long as I could count to at least the number 13), I never questioned where the “teen” came in. We go from twelve to thirteen to fourteen and so on. I reasoned that “teen” was just a better and more fluid way of saying “ten”. Thirten and Fourten just don’t sound as cool.

But here is the aha. Ten in Dutch is “tien”, which is prounounced like “teen”. Also in dutch, numbers are built backwards (which I am still getting used to). So, for example, the number twentytwo in dutch is translated as “two and twenty”.

Just like our “teen” system! Three and ten, four and ten, five and ten, etc… Get it?

I feel so much smarter now. It turns out that our “teen” system is likely a derivative of Dutch and/or Germandeveloped before 900AD. Real linguists out there will know for sure. But I don’t really care about the specifics!