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

[lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com]

In Klingon, it's quite possible that the current numbers give a hint as to what it was like making the transition:

I'm going to count to (the new) ten.

One, two, not yet, wait for it, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

jItogh. wa'maH vIghoS. wa', cha', wej, loS, vagh, jav, Soch, chorgh, Hut, wa'maH.

I also find it interesting that the numbers "seven" and "eight" so closely resemble "visit" and "conquer", which seems like a very natural sequence for a Klingon...

On Sep 18, 2014, at 9:11 AM, Elizabeth Lawrence <elizabeth.lawrence08 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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