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Re: [Fwd: dozenal and hexadecimal digits]

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Friday, May 12, 2000, 18:57
At 10:05 am -0400 12/5/00, John Cowan wrote:
>This message comes from the Unicode list. > >Antoine Leca wrote: > >[esnipage] > >> By the way, I took advantage that in French numbers up to 16 have a special >> name to design a system to "read" hexadecimal numbers (instead of spelling >> when a digit from ten to fifteen appears):
Yes, it's often occurred to me that one could do just that. :) But I have some problems with Antoine's system. I find thar lazy students who read, e.g. 32 as "thirty two" then vaguely think of it as 3*10+2 instead of 3*16+2. I insist on their just reading the digits if we are using hex. But if we had a truly hexadecimal naming sysyem, 'twould be better IMHO.
>> 0 zéro >> 1 un >> 2 deux >> 3 trois >> 4 quatre >> 5 cinq >> 6 six >> 7 sept >> 8 huit >> 9 neuf >> A dix >> B onze >> C douze >> D treize >> E quatorze >> F quinze >> 10 seize >> 11 seize-et-un (that is the most difficult to remember)
Does this Gallic habit have to come over into hex? :)
>> 12 seize-deux >> 1B seize-et-onze
Why? Seems to be introducing a decimal naming convention into hex?
>> 1F seize-quinze >> 20 vingt >> 2A vingt-dix >> 30 trente
Ach! vingt means "twenty", not "thirty two" & trente is "thirty" not "forty eight" etc. If the French can cope with things like 'quatre-vignt dix-neuf' (99), then I think they'd be quite able to cope with something more along the lines the Welsh did in forming the modern decimal system, as opposed to the old vigesimal. Thus (I'm dropping hyphens): 10 (un) seize 11 un seize (et) un 12 un seize deux 1A un seize dix 1B un seize onze 20 deux seize(s) 21 deux seize (et) un 22 deux seize deux 30 trois seize(s) .. F0 quinze seize(s) FF quinze seize-quinze Don't know what to do with 100 (16^2, i.e. 256. Of course, if we stuck to reading hex in byte-size chunks, the problem doesn't arise :)
>> >> But I never find myself to use it: habits are too much engraved, >> and 71 is definitively "soixante-et-onze", and 18 is "dix-huit" >> instead of "seize-huit" to me.
That's why IMO one doesn't want to use words like soixante etc. Ray. ========================================= A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language. [J.G. Hamann 1760] =========================================