Re: OT: Need help with numeric bases

Peter Clark wrote at 2003-02-24 15:48:45 (-0600)

 >         This is related to conculturing (Enamyn uses a base-8
 > system), but on the other hand, it's of little general interest, so
 > please respond off-list.
 >
 >         Anyways, as I was saying, Enamyn uses a base-8 system,
 > except that instead of being 0-7, it is 1-8 (there's no concept of
 > zero). My problem has been finding some way of mathematically
 > describing it. The standard method of using the remainder doesn't
 > work: for instance, decimal 16 should be octal 18 rather than octal
 > 20.  Also, how does one go about converting the base of non-integer
 > numbers?

Personally, I think number bases are sufficiently "linguistic" to
belong on conlang, and certainly there should be no problem as long as
there's an OT: in the subject line.  It'll be more on-topic than
nearly 50% of what we've had in the past couple of weeks.

How exactly does your system work without zero?  Most systems without
zero are tally systems rather than place-value systems.  I think some
early systems (Babylonian? Egyptian) were place value and simply
ommitted zero, leading to ambiguity.  But this doesn't seem to be
either.  List the numbers from 1 to 16.

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