Editing Talk:Zero no Tsukaima:Volume9 Chapter9 (section)

== About Tens of Them? ==

You don't use tens in English as a counter like this.  If there is some unknown number greater than ten, you use the counter ''Dozens''.  ie, there are '''dozens''' of them.  In this case I changed it to ''there was about ten of them'' as that seemed more appropriate in this case.

The use of dozens is a throw back to the pre-decimal system, of which 12 inches to the foot is the best known.  In pre-decimal currency, there used to be 240 (20*12) pennies to the [http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/economic/currency.htm pound]! Sounds stupid even to me , and I grew up with both (the change over started in 1970.  I was 6.) Just think of writing software using a base12 system.  Hex is bad enough, thank you very much>_<

JBV^_^


A quick check at dictionary.com yields this:

[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tens]- One of the results is 'ten' itself, indicating that a plural is possible? 

And ten of them is different from the context, as the author wants to say that there are tens/twenties/thirties/forties... of them.

But if you want it, I suppose it won't hurt to use dozens.

--[[User:Zyzzyva165|Zyzzyva165]] 13:56, 6 January 2009 (UTC)