Re: Base 8 counting in Gevey

Tristan wrote:
>At 09.36 a.m. 19.10.2001 +0200, you wrote:
>>En réponse à Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:
>> > >Bases in languages
>> > >are the "root" numbers used to count. For instance, French uses both
>> > base
>> > >10
>> > >and base 20 (for numbers until 16 and for numbers from 60 until 99).
>
>How is English, given the nature of 'eleven' and 'twelve'? Partially base
>twelve but normally decimal? Or am I misunderstanding the concept?
Eleven and twelve are simply irregularities - unsystematic names of commonly
used numbers (rest assured that we'd had an unitary word for
sixhundred-fifty-three, it'd quickly go out of use!).

The -teens and -ties aren't totally regular either - one could've expected
forms like (one-)ten-five instead of fifteen and three-ten-nine instead of
thirty-nine. Tairezazh's system works basically like that.

                                           Andreas

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