And it’s a good one. It made me smile.
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The same people who decided it was four instead of for, and then said it’d be best is one wrote fourth instead of forth.
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It’s not an organisation or ruler who makes spelling rules but the people who started dropping the u in forty back in the 16th cent… After a long time it then became the accepted spelling. That’s the way it mostly works: codification follows usage.
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Why twelve and not twoteen?
I think I’ll start calling it that and see what happens. 
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They say you get paid bimonthly! Is that twice a month or every two months. Just like biweekly. Twice a week or every two weeks.
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Does life begin at Forty or Fourty or thoughty?
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Perhaps it’d be easier in Greek:
-
4 – τέσσερα – tessera
-
14 – δεκατέσσερα (dekatésera)
-
40 – σαράντα (saránda)
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Huh … now you’re showing off 
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If you’ve got it, flaunt it.
I have no shame in showing off my skills of using Google 
Having said that, the Romans had the same sort of issues…
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But I don’t want no more math schoolin’ !!!
(Interesting though!)
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You are the first person have ever known who also finds this maddening 
. I have no idea what it means and have to stop whatever I’m doing to focus my pea-sized brain on the context.
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These numbers are such a pain. When people reel of numbers, prices or phone numbers, my brain hears quatre … and thinks got it, four. Then they add vingt, Ok me thinks four twenty … wait no, it is eighty. Then they continue dix. Four, twenty, ten - this is a strange price. Then they finally finish with sept. My brain is fried and all they have done is say 97. Then they go for the next number pair in the phone number. Soixante, ok, me thinks, sixty. But they add quinze. Right that is sixty fifteen. That is surely four numbers of their phone number. Nope, that is 75.
I have also suspected that the phone company allocates english speakers with phone numbers full of such things - our house number ends 86 98. It is evil. But then again about half of the french language is full of evil things to catch out non-native speakers.
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That suggests you’ve had some already 
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Plus (which is curiously spelled the same but pronounced differently, probably out of spite 
), the way they write their 1’s. It’s enough to put the fear of god into anyone. 
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Hi, how are you doing?
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Alright, U?, see your in Texas too, there are a few other that stop by every once in a while.
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I don’t think any one person made the rules for standardising the spellings of words.
It just evolved over time, due to usage and phonetic variants, but when printing presses took over from handwritten books and people started publishing dictionaries, it played a large part in standardising words which used to have many variants of spellings.
The word “forty” has had more than a dozen spelling variations over the centuries, so standardising the spelling has done us all a favour - forty is a lot quicker to write than the original word fēowertig !
Edited:
After posting, I started wondering where the word “dozen” came from , so had a Google - used to be “duodecim” (Latin - two-ten”) or “dozaine” (Norman French for group of twelve) and twelve used to be “twalef” (Old English Germanic meaning “two left” after finger-counting the base of ten, there was two left over)
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Thought I’d have a look for other ways that the number 40 has been and is written over the ages and across the planet. Didn’t really get too far with it, but did come across this, which I’d love to get a hold of…
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That’s brilliant Dex, I had no idea how important the number 40 was…
I just can’t wait to see what mystery it will contain when somebody posts the fortieth post on this thread…
Just 14 to go… 
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Hi Mr. ROBIN! I’m doing pretty well. I hope you’re doing pretty well too. One of the user here asked me what i loved most about Texas…there are great cities in Texas, and Texas people are friendly. Haha
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