Re: Yawn....err...Happy...uh...Millennium....or something...?

>From: Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
>"Daniel A. Wier" wrote:
> > Not really Y2K in Techia either.  The Ethiopian calendar says it's only
> > 1992.
>
>What do they count from?
I have no idea.  The calendar is based on Julian; that I know.

>Among the Kassí, it's still the second "century" (base 12, remember), a
>few years from the first year of the third "century"
Tech numbers are traditionally in base-20 -- but if the language is written
in Latin or Arabic script, you have to write numbers in base-10.  So words
for 'hundred', 'thousand' (_?@lf_ < Arabic _?alf_) and 'ten thousand'
(_mI-ryadh_ < Greek _myriados_) had to be borrowed.  Even later were taken
'million' (_milyo~_), 'thousand million' (_milyardh_), 'billion'
(_bilyo~_)...

So a century is a century, and a millennium is a millennium.  But the syntax
for 1999 and 2000 would be more traditionally, respectively: 'four
four-hundreds nineteen score and nineteen' (but more modern use could be
'sixteen hundred nineteen score and nineteen'), and five four-hundred.  But
of course you could say two thousand or even twenty hundred.

And that leaves many ways to describe large numerals; for example,
16,777,216 is read...

1. sixteen million seventy seven myriad seventy-two hundred sixteen
2. sixteen million threescore seventeen score myriad threescore twelve
sixteen
3. sixteen million seven hundred threescore seventeen thousand two hundred
sixteen
4. five three-point-two million four sixteen-myriad seventeen eight-thousand
three four-hundred sixteen

The last one would be tantamount as using 'unto thee' in English.

Danny
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