[Tlhingan-hol] do any human cultures count like Klingons do?

[Elizabeth Lawrence]

I think that Lieven's distinction between mathematical notation and spoken
counting words is important.  A lot of sets of counting words have bizarre
irregularities that don't fit the base system they use particularly well.
 Eleven and twelve are the minor English example, but French numbers are a
real mess.  It works similarly to English numeration up through the sixties
(though the non-composed teen numbers, like eleven and twelve, go up
through sixteen), but then seventy is sixty-ten, and 71 is sixty-11 and so
on.  Then 80 is four-twenty, and the nineties go four-twenty-ten,
four-twenty-eleven, etc.

I think there are a lot more oddities in human counting than we think, and
I suspect there were many more historically, that have been removed from
our languages as mathematics became more organized.  For example, I suspect
Bilbo Baggins' "eleventy-first birthday" could easily have been part of
English numbering some centuries ago.  I would be interested in any data
anyone had on the topic of changes to counting over time.

That idea also fits with the notion that Klingons counted one way until
they started trying to express higher mathematics, and then they revised
their number system.  That likely comports with what happened as ideas
spread around the globe.

I have no idea how the notation on the early Klingon number system would
have worked, but I think it is worth considering that the level of
systematicity required in spoken language is considerably less exacting.

be''etlh

On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 8:52 AM, Lieven <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:

> Am 18.09.2014 14:33, schrieb lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com:
>
>> I'm curious as to how Roman Numerals would figure into this. [...]
>> you count one, two, three, four, five, five + one, five + two, [...]
>>
>
> Hm... I am no latin speaker, but as far as I remember that's how they
> "write", not how they "count" using words.
>
> latin Hol vIjatlhlaHbe', 'ach loQ mI'meyDaj vISov. mI'meyDaj ghItlhmeH,
> patlIj lulo', 'ach mI'mey jatlhmeH, latlh mu'mey ghaj Rom nganpu'.
>
>
> --
> Lieven L. Litaer
> aka Quvar valer 'utlh
> http://www.facebook.com/Klingonteacher
> http://wiki.qepHom.de
>
>
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