I always felt like negative bases are just strange enough, yet just practical enough, that they almost could have arisen as a system of numbers in a natural lan

I always felt like negative bases are just strange enough, yet just practical enough, that they almost could have arisen as a system of numbers in a natural language. For example, phrasing 11 as 191, “one more than 90 less than 100”, would be unusual for such a small number but definitely sounds “naturalistic”, like phrasing 1990 as “a thousand, a hundred less than a thousand, ten less than a hundred” in Roman numerals, 99 as “four-twenty ten-nine” in French, or 9 as “five four” in Khmer.