Re: ConNumbers

Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:

>
>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.
>

But don't forget the base 2/3/4/8/12 English measuring system.


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