Re: Number systems (was: Picto & Dil)

On Wednesday, April 20, 2005, at 01:29 , Henrik Theiling wrote:

> Ray writes in respose to me:
[snip]
>> I know - but I do not think either Fr Schleyer not Arie de Jong were
>> familiar with counting in east Asian langs    :)
Apologies for the typo - I meant of course 'Fr Fr Schleyer _nor_ Arie de
Jong' - but looking at it again I think it ought t have been _or_ in any
case. What a mix-up of boolean operators!

> Ok, right.  I should have thought of that.  (Actually it surprised me
> too, when I learnt it -- and then the next step was to surprised me
> that I had never noticed that it was totally arbitrary to split
> numbers every *three* digits... :-) )
I've always assume it happened because 'mille' is the highest numeric word
in Latin and Roman numbers stop with M; then we start again and put a bar
over the lot to multiply it by 1000.

If Greek culture had had a significant effect on western & central
European culture, I suppose we might have counted in myriads (10000), but
even their numeric symbols only went up to 999; you then used the same
ones again, but with a mark to multiply them by 1000 - so I guess the
number symbols would still have suggested counting in 1000s  :(

>> ...
>>> (The above number would be
>>>    'nine ten one two three four five six seven eight nine'
>>> in Tyl Sjok, BTW.  Erm, with all words directly translated, of
>>> course. :-))
>>
>> In other words: 0.123456789e9     :-)
>
> 1.23456789e9, actually, but the principle is this, yes.
OOOPS - darn decimal point! Sorry - must've been a senior moment on my
part  :)

So if 'nine ten one two three four five six seven eight nine' =
1.23456789e9, then do we just say (with direct translation) 'five ten one
two three four five six seven eight nine' to denote 1.23456789e5, thus
eliminating any need for a Tyl Sjok word for point/decimal/comma?

>
>> or, in Tyl Sjok:
>> {exponent} ten {mantissa}
>
> Exactly.
Nifty!

>> It's neat, but how easy this is the 'person in the street' I don't know
>> -
>> as you say there is a lack of empirical data   :-)
>
> Hmm -- I don't think it's more complex to count the factors of ten
> instead of learning several words for a few of them.  The 'person on
> the street' possibly just uses relatively small number words, and when
> getting exposed to larger ones, they'd hopefully not be scared away by
> a different type of number representation, because the one they'd use
> on the street is just the normal one.
Ooh - but they would IME - it's surprising the number of adults, in the UK
at least, that just have a mental block when it comes to anything
unfamiliar with numbers. It would be those brought up with the new system
that might find it easier, but......
>
> No empirical data, yes.  I can only say that I *guess* that it's at
> most equally complex for the normal speaker to learn this -- if not
> easier.
Quite - without empirical data, it is guess work. I don't know how we
could go about getting empirical data. It would certainly be very
interesting IMO.

>> I guess if the exponent is greater than 9, then we'll have 'ten'
>> expressed
>> twice, for example
>> ten one two ten three four five six seven = 0.34567e12
>
> That's the point where it might get tricky for the ordinary speaker,
> right.  But ask a person on the street to say the above number in his
> 'native' way in English... :-)))
Good point! Yes, once numbers get past a certain point they cease to mean
much more than "a terrifically large great big ginormous number of..."
  :)
And those for whom actual precision is important would probably find the
mantissa-exponent method easier anyway.

> BTW: The Tyl-Sjok number is exactly right!  See, it's easy! :-))))
> (But again, the mantissa should be shifted by one: 3.4567e12 equals
> that number in Tyl Sjok).
I agree on both points.   :-)

>> They should certainly be aware of the problem if they are supposed to
>> global. But the prefixes for SI units are based on the 1000 division: ..
>> .
>> pico-, nano-, micro-, mili-, kilo-, mega-, giga- etc
OOPS - that should be milli- not mili-

> Ah -- right.  Hmm, not nice to the east Asian languages -- do they use
> a different system?  I guess not, right?
I guess not either. But it must be easier than working with a mile of 1760
yards or 5280 feet  :)

What strikes me as inelegant is that all the prefixes that denote division
by a power of 1000 (or negative exponent) end in -o except for milli-;
likewise all the prefixes that denotes multiplying by powers of 1000 end
in -a except kilo- (which looks as tho it ought to belong to the former
group  :)

As regards the latter, it has always seemed to me that the simple solution
is to ignore the strange Frenchified kilo- and revert to the proper Greek
chilia- (cf. the English words chiliad, chiliagon, chiliahedron etc).

As for milli-, a simple modification to millio- would suffice. Yep, I know
it would not be well formed from a purely Latin point of view - but then
neither are pico-, nano- or micro-  :)

> (In Tyl Sjok, these prefixes just don't exist (by definition :-))).
> You'd use 1000m instead of 1km.  This holds for whatever unit.)
But 1024b instead of 1Kb   :)

>> and that might suggest keeping a similar system in an auxlang - but
>> I'll leave that to that other list ;)
>
> Right -- may this be discussed in that place! :-)
They actually _discuss_ things there now, do they (just kidding  :)

Ray
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Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
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as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

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