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Re: Telona number system

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Monday, March 3, 2003, 0:39
Sarah Marie Parker-Allen wrote:

> It might not need a base-system in order to say what a number is,
That seems to be true. One thing that puzzled me, is that the number names could be somewhat variable-- e.g. 36 is 9*4. But could it also be 6^2? or 18*2, or why not 12*3, since 24 is 12*2 and 48 is 12*4 (why not 6*4, 6*8 resp. for these???). I think the people who speak this language must be mathematical geniuses, and preoccupied with prime numbers-- who else could figure out that 1918 could be described as a multiple of 7*2 *{ru 17*4}. To me, that's perverse/devilish brain-wiring :-)) and quite fascinating. And now that I think of it-- "one" was not used at all in the multiples (obviously, since *1 is trivial); it's only occurrence must be in statements like "I want to buy (just) one...X". The vocabulary could probably be tinkered with so as to eliminate the word entirely. Another thing I wonder about-- if they have separate symbols for numbers, how are multiples written? anything like place notation? what would divi ilcur (9*4, 36) look like? (well, I can image a "9" symbol combined with a "4" symbol modified to indicate it's a multiplier...) or that 1918 number??? I certainly look forward to JK's fuller explanation.