Re: Number systems (was: Picto & Dil)

Hi!

Ray writes in respose to me:
>..
> >  And the next level of base words is 'a
> > million', 'a billion', etc? (balion, kelion, ...)?
>
> I have no information about this - I presume that this was left the same
> in reformed Volapük. Also I assume _kelion_ was 'billion' in the older
> German & British use of 'a million millions', and not the American (and
> now IME contemporary British) use of a 'thousand millions'.
Ah, ok.

> > I still don't like this specialised treatment of a few exceptional
> > bases (like 10, 100, 1000 in many IE langs and 10, 100, 1000, 10000 in
> > most East Asian langs) with a second level of special bases (e.g. a
> > million in English or '100 million' in Japanese).  It introduces an
> > asymmetry and makes translation of large numbers between, say,
> > Japanese and English were hard.  Try translating '123,456,789' from
> > English into Japanese.  That's very painful.
>
> I know - but I do not think either Fr Schleyer not Arie de Jong were
> familiar with counting in east Asian langs    :)
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... :-) )

>...
> > (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.

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

> 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.

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.

> 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... :-)))

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).

> 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
Ah -- right.  Hmm, not nice to the east Asian languages -- do they use
a different system?  I guess not, right?

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

> 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! :-)

**Henrik

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