Re: measuring systems (was: Selenites)

-----Mensaje original-----
De: Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Fecha: Lunes 28 de Septiembre de 1998 01:10

>Charles wrote:
>> I'm wondering if base 12 or 6 or 20 have special conlang properties,
>> useful enough so as to challenge base 10?
>
>Sure.  W. probably uses a base 24 system (I'm wondering whether to
>revert to 12).  Twelve is divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6 - all common
>numbers.  Dividing into 5 yields an unwieldy repeating fraction
>(.2497... in duodecimal notation), but 1/5 is a less common fraction
>than 1/3 or 1/4 (respectively .4 and .3)
>
The .2497..., .4 and .3 notations are based in the way we use base ten in
modern ways for representing parts of unit.
As I've sound in most cases, when using base ten in conlangs, a number like
56 is named five-ten-six.  If we remember form Romans, they use not
positional notation for numbers, then 56 was LVI where L=50, V=5, I=1, and,
in older text, even with the Arabic/Indian notation, parts of units where
given as fractions, then 1/5 was nothing complicated as 0.249724972497...,
but 1/5.

How many other proposals for naming/representing numbers are there in
conlangs?

Notations for 56 like
fifty-six
fifty and six
six and fifty (like in German)
five-ten-six
sixty-minus-four
four-to-sixty
six and half-three-twenties (like Danish?)
?

(translating this into the base used)