An episode of Candid Camera was filmed near me in London many years ago where they set up a market stall selling veg with a “Thrice The Price Sale!”. Old dears choosing stuff were told “That’ll be thrice the price, love”, and thought they had a bargain. (The money was given back after.)
Yes, we've sort of used it in the wrong sense. It can be translated as 'again', but it can also mean 'another'. E.g. if you asked for another beer, you would say 'encore une bière', rather that 'une autre biere', which would mean 'a different beer'.
I'd say that it's not French but actually latin for 'twice' and it's used in Italy when requesting an extra piece from the artists at the end of the published programmed show. I don't know who got it from who.
In Italy is also used when referring to a further serving of food as "fare il bis"
and bis is from latin which comes from old lat. duis, from Proto-Italic *dwis, from PIE (🧓🇮🇳🇪🇺) *dwís “in two, twice, doubly”, adverb derived from *dwóh₁ “two”
even tho etimology of twice is a bit different cuz genitive suffix was added in the middle🏴
the idea & base r kinda similar thruout languages
However, from faded memories of school boy German, the use of “mal” is often used fairly loosely.
Such as “Noch einmal bier bitte”, translated would be “another beer please”
But it could also mean "another round of beer". It means "once again", not "one".
"Noch einmal Bier" when you only mean to order another beer for you personally would be a very uncommon sentence.
I think you turned ‘Noch ein Bier bitte’ into ‘nocheinmal Bier bitte’. I live in Germany and I think they’d mainly be confused by you not saying what kind/brand of beer you want 😂
Yes, δις and τρις are exactly right. They mean twice and thrice in the same dual way - 1. two (three) times, on two (three) occasions; and 2. double (triple) the amount. But τετραπλάσιος and πενταπλάσιος only have the second meaning - four times and five times the amount. Incidentally, once is άπαξ.
You can then form any number of times or occasions by adding the suffix –άκις, e.g. πέντε (five) πεντάκις (five times), έξι (six) εξάκις(six times), δέκα (ten) δεκάκις (ten times), etc. This isn't a word in itself and so not like the German -mal. It's just a multiplier suffix.
In Welsh it's dwywaith and teirgwaith. Dwy and tair are the feminine two and three respectively, and gwaith means time as in "occasion, repetition" (for time as a duration or concept we use amser). Chuck in some mutations and a vowel change, and you get dwywaith and teirgwaith.
It's the same in Cornish - diwweyth (twice), from diw (two, female) and gweyth (occasion). Never heard of thrice being used though, which I guess would be teyrweyth.
Cornish is actually the reason I started learning Welsh. I actually wanted to learn Cornish, but the workbooks were horrendously dull, and back in the 80s/90s, there really wasn't a Cornish learning community that I could access. So in '98, I started learning Welsh instead.
There are a lot of classes round now, if you're in Cornwall - and I dare say probably some online. Most the textbooks are still horrendously dull, though.
Curiously, 4x is just pedair gwaith, but 5x could be pumwaith. Six is chwe gwaith, but seven is seithgwaith, and eight is either wyth gwaith or wythwaith. Nine is naw gwaith but ten is dengwaith (ten is 'deg', but 'deng' before a vowel).
I love Welsh, but consistency is not its strong point.
Welsh makes me spend a lot of time thinking about things like "how do I pluralise this?" and "what letter will I find this word under in the dictionary?" As a learner it's a heck of a journey.
It's not like the other things you worry about learning a language are missing, it's just you have a whole lot of tricky stuff before you even get there.
And then you do and it's all "a i i'r llyfrgell" and now I sound like a monkey sneezing!
Plurals are a nightmare. Honestly, you have to just learn them as you go along because as far as I can see, there are no useful rules. The alphabet stuff gets easier as you go, for sure. Dal ati, a da iawn!
It makes sense that a lot of nouns are plural by default and I get along with the -au latinate pluralisation, but when it's things like car -> ceir you just have to learn it.
I'm sure I remember that some tribes existing today only count as far as two, and then jump to the equivalent of "loads" because it's not worth counting more than you can carry in two hands.
Isn't that the trolls in Pratchett's books? Though thinking about it he probably got it from somewhere real, I think he liked to do that, use weird but true things in his books.
In Danish it’s technically ‘to gange’ which is ‘two times’. However, being Danish they drop words/syllables to be more efficient so you can just as well use ‘to’ for ‘twice’ which becomes clear in the context of the sentence! So in answer to your question, both yes and no!
Japanese counting systems are insane.
One, two, three, four is easy: ichi, ni, san, shi
But if you're counting sheets of paper: ichimai, nimai etc
Small animals: ippiki, nippiki etc
Bottles of beer: ippon, nihon, sanbon etc
People: hitori, futari, san-nin etc https://blog.rosettastone.com/japanese-counters/
One, two, three, four is easy apart from the fact there are two sets of numbers. Those taken from Chinese (ichi, ni, san, etc) and native Japanese numbers: hitotsu, futatsu, mitsu, yotsu, ...
In writing, they look like this:
Chinese numbers: 一, ニ, 三, 四, ...
Japanese numbers: 一, ニ, 三, 四, ...
Then there is another set of written characters used on banknotes and other financial documents to prevent cheating: 壱, 弐, 参, 肆, ...
But they may also be written: 1, 2, 3, 4 ...
Days of the month start off with the Chinese numbers (apart from the 1st, which is tsuitachi = "moonrise") then switch to Japanese numbers after the 10th but use Chinese for the 20th and a mixture for some of the others. Apart from that, it's very straightforward
Yep.
"dó” (two) changes to “dhá” when counting things and "beirt" when referring to 2 people.
The spelling of the noun being counted also changes:
Bád is boat
Dhá bhád is 2 boats
Seacht mbád is 7 boats
Oh that's not what I was thinking of at all, how interesting.
(I actually meant a grammatical rule about whether certain letters precede the word being changed, rather than being directly related to numbers, but here it does seem to be directly due to the numbers. Fascinating!)
Yes, but in English you still say two tubes of toothpaste, three tubes of toothpaste etc. You don't change the "two" or "three" because the toothpaste tube happens to be a certain shape.
No, but those are fairly simple sound changes. English does have its own issues there such as with pronunciation between vowels (e.g. two_w_eggs, three_y_eggs).
Those are measure words. I don't know if Japanese has them, Chinese certainly has. (Maybe they're integrated with the number in Japanese which is why the counting system changes?)
But at least in Chinese if you use 个 gè it might not be right but people will still know what you mean!
Trying to learn Japanese on duolingo and baffled by a country that has three alphabets and they mix them in sentences. Japanese primary school teachers must all have the patience of a saint.
The two phonetic alphabets (hiragana and katakana) are relatively easy to memorise & useful for reading signs etc. But Kanji is a bitch: each character has a range of different sounds and meanings, depending on which other characters it's combined with. And there are THOUSANDS of them.
I am convinced that the real reason Japan was isolated for so long is that every foreigner that arrived tried to learn the language then said 'Sod this' and went home.
It gets worse.
Ichi, ni, san, shi is easy until you find out it could be ichi, ni, san, yon, or hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu, yottsu. And days of the month are irregular.
Comments
Specifically children, animals, mixed sex groups of people (eg students), and nouns only existing in plural.
In Italy is also used when referring to a further serving of food as "fare il bis"
Not only do they not have a word for 'entrepreneur', they also don't have a word for 'encore'.
* Not a sentence I ever thought I would write...
even tho etimology of twice is a bit different cuz genitive suffix was added in the middle🏴
the idea & base r kinda similar thruout languages
https://youtube.com/shorts/3szCt2GxFpo?si=piDWsKj5U57kPAc_
Such as “Noch einmal bier bitte”, translated would be “another beer please”
"Noch einmal Bier" when you only mean to order another beer for you personally would be a very uncommon sentence.
Not sure if @sturdyalex.bsky.social would say these are archaic, but
δις
τρῐ́ς
τετραπλάσιος !!!
πενταπλάσιος !!!
Or as the Romans would have it
bis
tris
QUATER!!!
quintuplex ....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_(grammatical_number)
I love Welsh, but consistency is not its strong point.
And then you do and it's all "a i i'r llyfrgell" and now I sound like a monkey sneezing!
One, two, three, four is easy: ichi, ni, san, shi
But if you're counting sheets of paper: ichimai, nimai etc
Small animals: ippiki, nippiki etc
Bottles of beer: ippon, nihon, sanbon etc
People: hitori, futari, san-nin etc
https://blog.rosettastone.com/japanese-counters/
Chinese numbers: 一, ニ, 三, 四, ...
Japanese numbers: 一, ニ, 三, 四, ...
Then there is another set of written characters used on banknotes and other financial documents to prevent cheating: 壱, 弐, 参, 肆, ...
But they may also be written: 1, 2, 3, 4 ...
"dó” (two) changes to “dhá” when counting things and "beirt" when referring to 2 people.
The spelling of the noun being counted also changes:
Bád is boat
Dhá bhád is 2 boats
Seacht mbád is 7 boats
(I actually meant a grammatical rule about whether certain letters precede the word being changed, rather than being directly related to numbers, but here it does seem to be directly due to the numbers. Fascinating!)
A tube of toothpaste, a packet of biscuits, a can of beans etc...
But at least in Chinese if you use 个 gè it might not be right but people will still know what you mean!
Ichi, ni, san, shi is easy until you find out it could be ichi, ni, san, yon, or hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu, yottsu. And days of the month are irregular.
İki(two)şer
Üç(three)er
And so forth 🙌🏻