On Danish and Swedish Numbers
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It is a fact well-known to most Swedes that have enjoyed Danish culture,
that the Danish number system is /jätteforvirrande/. I can assure
you, however, that there is some sort of logic to it.

For readers unfamiliar with Danish and Swedish numbers, these are the numbers
from 1 to 9 along with the multiples of 10 as they are written in Danish,
Swedish, and English.

Note that all multiples of 10 up to 100 (with the exception of 10 and 20) are in
Swedish just written as a number between 1 and 10 followed by the /tio/
suffix.

Let us as an example consider the number 52. In Swedish, this number is written
{\emphfont femtitvå}. Add some dashes to that and you get /fem-ti-två/ --
literally /fifty-two/ or even /five-ten-two/: five tens plus two. In
Danish, the number 52 is written as {\emphfont tooghalvtreds}, or with dashes: /to-og-halvtreds/ -- literally /two-fifty/. Note that in Swedish,
numbers are written left-to-right (as in English), e.g., /femti-två/: 50-2,
whereas in Danish, numbers are written right-to-left (as in German), e.g., /to-og-halvtreds/: 2-50. By now, you might complain: ``The Danish way is clearly not as clean as
  the Swedish one! How is 'halvtreds' (50) even connected to 'fem' /(5)?''/

Let us take a further look at the Danish writing of the number 52 before we
throw the language away and declare Swedish the ultimate Scandinavian language
for counting numbers below 100. The number /to-og-halvtreds/ can actually be reduced
further. If we translate /halv-treds/ to English a bit literally, we get {\emphfont
  half-treds}, whatever a /treds/ is. Looking closely, we can see that we
also have a half /fjerds/ (70) and a half /fems/ (90).

The key for understanding all of this is the old Danish word for a number of 20
(like the word /dozen/ in English denotes a number of 12): /snes/. We
can now see that the number 60, /treds/, actually is a shortened form of tredje /snes/, meaning third /snes/: 3 times 20. The number 50,
{\emphfont halv-treds}, is but half a snes from the third snes, and so we see
that halv-tredje /snes/, half third /snes/, is a half snes until the
third snes. And so we see that the number 52, /to-og-halv-treds/, is
actually just two and half third /snes/.

In the light of this amazing, new discovery, you might be thinking that the
Danish number system is a bit odd or archaic since nobody counts anything in
snes anymore. If you think so, I will gladly agree with you. The Danish language
has quite a few antiquities hidden in plain sight -- sometimes it's a bit of a
museum -- but more on that some other time.

P.S. Den alternativa titeln til denna text var ``Hur fan räknar de i Danmark?''