I’m European. I’m not talking about American cars.

And it’s also a joke with a bit of truth to it. They do require much more care so they’re more often in the workshop than, say a Toyota.

BMW’s are famously known to be in the workshop more often than on the road. My friend’s BMW had a type of self-cleaning oil. All he has to do is top off the oil once a month. Just ignore the stain on the parking lot, it’s not oil.

It’s not like a BMW is more reliable.

We actually still say “halvanden” in Danish too. Everything else is not used (except for halvfems which means 90…)

No idea. We probably had a period where we traded a lot with the French and got influenced by the vigesimal system that way, creating the abomination of a Frankenstein monster we have today.

The reason is that the Danish numbering system is based on a vigesimal (base-20) system instead of the decimal system. Why is a good question but it might have been influenced by French during a time where numbers from 50-100 is less frequently used, making them prone to complexity. The fractions simply occur since you need at least one half of twenty (10) to make the change from e.g 50 to 60 in a 20-based system.

Even worse. 90 in old Danish is “halvfemsindstyve” but it is rarely used today. The “sinds” part is derived from “sinde” means multiplied with but it is not in use in Danish anymore. That leaves halvfems, meaning half to the five (which is not used alone anymore) and tyve meaning twenty (as it still does).

We are in current Danish shortening it to halvfems which actually just means “half to the five” in old Danish (4.5) to say 90. 92 is then “tooghalvfems” (two and half to the five, or 2+4.5). The “sindstyve” part (multiplied with 20) fell out of favour.

So we at least have some rules to the madness. Were just not following them at all anymore.

Edit: Minor old Danish math correction.