Re: ConNumbers
| From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, June 10, 1999, 6:03 |
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Fabian wrote:
> You forgot English, which has remnants of both base 20 and base 12 in the
> names of the numbers. 20 is shown in the teens, and base 12 in eleven and
> twelve, which are otherwise irregular, except in teh terms dozen and gross.
> Oh, and base 20 makes it again in 'score'.
Actually, "dozen" was a borrowed term, from French. The teens are a
survival, not of base-20, but of an older ordering, "five and twenty",
so "seven and ten" --> "seventeen". Eleven and twelve come from
proto-Germanic *ainlif, from *ainaz (one) and *lif related to "leave",
twelve from *twalif, thus they meant something like "one over" and "two
over", which would be pushing the definition of "base" quite a bit to
call that base-12.
--
Happy that Nation, - fortunate that age, whose history is not diverting
-- Benjamin Franklin
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