Re: Possible base-20 numeric system

Hi!

Trebor Jung <treborjung@...> writes:
> Basic roots:
>
> nol: zero
>...
> tistïstïs: two hundred
> ...
Good! :-)

> How do you think I should combine to form higher numbers?
Well, if you want a system similar to decimal in English, decide how
many digits would make a 'paket', say n, and then have words for

20^1    -> 20
20^2    -> 400
...
20^n    -> if n = 3 (as in English), that'd be it, namely: 8000

Then 20^n would correspond to the 'packet' number 1000 in English.

And then have larger numbers 20^(n*k) for k=1,... (in English: a
thousand, a million, a billion, etc.)

Say, n=3, then:

20^(3*1) = 8000      (corresponds to 1000 in English decimal system)
20^(3*2) = 64000000  (corresponds to 1000000 in English decimal system)
...

Chinese, Japanese, Korean (and others) have decimal with n=4.  There
are also natlangs that have n=2.

As an option, don't be so regular, e.g. compare the Hindi system of
numbers >= 100, it's quite interesting as the packets are sometimes
n=2 and sometimes n=3.

My conlangs Tyl Sjok and Qeng|ai have n=1, but it's a bit more
complicated than that, since the base may be 2, 8, 10, and 16 (and in
principle, anything between 2 and 16), and the exponents may be in
exponential form as well.

**Henrik

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