ConNumbers

        I have a conlang question with a natlang correlation to ask of y'all.  Just
like many of you said to me in regards to a previous list thread, a
conculture seems to be "magically" developing along with my conlang.  I
guess it's true, a language needs to be spoken, and a conlang
(theoretically) needs to have an application in a con-reality.  Right?  :)

        Here's my paradox:  the number six seems to be cropping up as an important
feature of Ricadh and its conculture.  It's an important focal point of the
Ricadh writing system (which is partially ideographic, like Japanese); for
reasons which I won't go into too much detail here, Ricadh characters are
classified in groups of six.  That in turn led me to the thought of
assigning numerical values to the characters, as in Hebrew.  And of course,
that fits best with a base-6 number system, because of the sheer number of
different characters (I plan on 216) -- the characters themselves could
serve as a sort of numeric shorthand.  (Analogy:  Binary => Hexadecimal.)

        So I thought to myself, who would count in base-6?  Certainly nobody I know
about ... all natlangs I've even touched in my studies count in base-10.
And I'm rather prejudiced against creating an alien culture for my language
(the reasons for that are best left to a different thread).  So I'd like to
know from y'all, is there a precedent for any human language with a number
system besides base-10?  And how did that manifest itself in the culture
that used it?

    -- Chris


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