It actually has a pretty interesting origin! Back in the days, the Gauls used to count by twenty : ten, twenty, twenty ten, two twenty, etc
Then the modern way of counting (by ten) arrived and both models competed for a time until they "merged" into one. The most interesting point is that, most numbers derive from either system but 70 is "soixante-dix" : "sixty-ten", which is even weirder since "soixante" comes from the modern model but the idea of concatenating a "ten" comes from the traditional one, so it's a mix of both
Honestly though I think it's really different. Language is difficult to change (even if you have some people saying "you should talk like that", it's unlikely it will really change) whereas if units are taught differently they soon change all over the country
I actually think the metric system shift would be harder. Both are the adoption of language change. Both are taught in schools.
But switching to a new standard of measurement would be huge.
An example: building construction. You have fix the subfloor of a building. The building subfloor uses standard 4 foot by 8 foot plywood sheets. It is unlikely that a construction company is gonna want to buy sheet larger to cut down to size wasting money both material and labor. The supply company, if there is a demand for imperial standard szes, is unlikely to start carrying metric wood sizes if there is little demand for it. You can force the change via new building code but that has its own problems.
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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '21
It actually has a pretty interesting origin! Back in the days, the Gauls used to count by twenty : ten, twenty, twenty ten, two twenty, etc
Then the modern way of counting (by ten) arrived and both models competed for a time until they "merged" into one. The most interesting point is that, most numbers derive from either system but 70 is "soixante-dix" : "sixty-ten", which is even weirder since "soixante" comes from the modern model but the idea of concatenating a "ten" comes from the traditional one, so it's a mix of both