Re: CHAT: Measurements (was: Re: CHAT: browsers)
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, February 11, 2003, 15:32 |
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En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:
>
> Is there any reason why you have . for thousands and , for decimal? Is
> that just how it's always been?
Yes.
It seems odd that the English
> tradition
> ha(d|s) it vice-versa.
>
I find it odd too. But I've seen French text from 3 centuries ago and commas
were already used as decimal points.
>
> I'm not sure what ten thousand has to do with this. I'm talking of
> four-digit numbers i.e. 1000--9999. Having a single word for ten
> thousand would make no difference as to whether they'res a space
> (comma,
> apostrophe, dot) in these, would it?
>
Yes it would, because tens of thousands would be seen as a simple value and
thus would *deserve* to be put in the group. So people would rather make groups
of four instead of 3 figures (1 0000 instead of 10 000). I know that because
Japanese people often complain that putting Arabic figures in groups of three
is confusing for them, and they'd rather make groups of four.
In other words, it is because "thousand" is the highest simple word which is
only 10 times the value of another one, and that the next one (million) is 1000
times bigger, it is natural for us to separate thousands, millions, etc...
> > all (they just talked about "depressions" and "anticyclones").
>
> ? I take it that those are highs and lows?
In the order I gave them: lows and highs ;)) .
The numbers are never
> mentioned by the weathermen, but when they're written, the legend
> normally gives them as hPa.
>
Here the legend doesn't give the unit. You're supposed to be intelligent enough
to know that they refer to millibars or hPa (humidity is never given on the
maps, and is in percents anyway, temperatures never reach thousands - we're not
on Venus ;)) -, and wind is on a scale from 1 to 12 - and has little arrows to
show the direction -, so no ambiguity is possible ;)) ).
Strange, never saw it in this meaning... Strange meaning by itself, no wonder
you never heard of it ;) .
Christophe.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.