Re: ConNumbers
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, June 9, 1999, 11:03 |
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At 18:13 08/06/99 PDT, you wrote:
> 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?
>
I think there are many languages which use other bases than base-10 to
count, or at least other bases with base-10. French uses consistently
base-10, and inconsistently base-20, Basque uses consistently base-20 for
small numbers (up to 100) and then base-10. I also heard of languages that
use base-5 for small numbers. I even heard of at least one natlang that
used bases that were not dividible one by the another (I think it was
base-12 and base-15). There are also many variants, like counting backwards
(Latin says 'duodeviginti': "20 minus 2" to mean 18), counting by the
position of the number in a list (an Amerindian language says '1-1-20':
"the first of the first twenties" to mean one), or things even weirder.
As you can see, freedom is great in counting systems.
To give an example in one of my conlangs, I'll talk about Tj'a-ts'a~n
which has base-7 and 8. This system functions as follows for the first
numbers:
1=1
2=2
3=3
4=4
5=5
6=6
7=7
8=8
8+1=9
8+2=10
8+3=11
8+4=12
8+5=13
2*7=14
2*7+1=15
2*8=16
2*8+1=17
2*8+2=18
2*8+3=19
2*8+4=20
3*7=21
3*7+1=22
3*7+2=23
3*8=24
3*8+1=25
...
As you can see, freedom is nearly total, and I wouldn't be surprised if a
natlang already uses a system such as that one.
> -- Chris
>
>
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