Re: Number system

Ray Brown wrote at 2005-04-25 18:04:33 (+0100)
 > On Sunday, April 24, 2005, at 08:55 , Ray Brown wrote:
 >
 > If Max wants to look for a real vigesimal natlang number system, he
 > must look outside of Europe. On his own continent he will find the
 > Maya. They used a proper vegesimal system like the one he
 > outlined. Also, unlike the pre-Arabic European number notations,
 > the ancient Maya did have a symbol for zero and used place
 > notation.
 >
 > Unlike us, they wrote their numbers in columns, not left ro right,
 > starting with the highest values at the top and the lowest at the
 > bottom.  For convenience, I'll turn them through 90 degrees and
 > write them as we do and use the our western Arabic symbols and
 > letters in the style of hexadecimal, except that we must extend it
 > :)
 >
 > 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F G H J K (omitted I to avoid
 > confusion with 1!)
 >
 > Mayan        Value
 >    10   =  (1 x 20)   +  0  = 20
 >    2F   =  (2 x 20)   +  15 = 55
 >    C9   =  (12 x 20)  +  9  = 249
 >   20K   =  (2 x 400)  + (0 x 20) + 19 = 819
 >  9033   =  (9 x 8000) + (0 x 400) + (3 x 20) + 3 = 72 063
 >
 > I regret I do not know the Mayan names for the numbers. But this is
 > surely the sort of system that Max has in mind.
 >

You can see a description of the Tzotzil number system here:
http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/language/number/tzotzil.html

(Of course, these won't be the same words used by the Classic Maya,
but they probably are cognates, and I imagine the system was
grammatically similar.)

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