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Because numbers written in the given number system don’t necessarily match up with the words in the given language. Take the number 475, for example. In English
by F3nd0 4y ago
Because numbers written in the given number system don’t necessarily match up with the words in the given language. Take the number 475, for example. In English that reads as ‘four hundred seventy five’. When you look at the number, the symbols correspond to the words. You have 4 (four, in position of hundreds), 7 (seven, in position of tens), and 5 (five).
Now consider a language which uses a different base, base 12 for example. The same number might be read as ‘three gross three dozen seven’. But when you look at the number, there is no symbol representing three, and no symbol representing seven in the position of units. The number is hard to parse and read out, and it is also hard to write when going by the words.
- hgsgm 4y agoThe French manage to convert between base 20 language and base 10 numerals.
- runarberg 4y agoSo do the Danish, however the Danish language only counts the 10s in base-20. The 100s, the 1000s, the decimals and so on are still in base-10. So what ends up happening is that the numbers 40-90 are simply numbers with weird names and a perfect mapping to base 10. I don’t know how French count, but perhaps it is similar. This does not appear to be the case with Inuit counting.
- acjohnson55 4y agoNot really. French is effectively base-10, but with some vestigial names. English is basically the same -- we say eleven instead of ten-one. The only real difference is that we say eighty instead of quatre-vingt. But neither system maintains any semblance of base-20 beyond that. A more familiar sense of disorientation of language mismatch would be when metric users encounter imperial units and their arbitrary bases.
- chadlavi 4y agoSome dialects of French have a word for 70, 80 and 90!
- plank 4y agoI thought nonante (and septante, octante) were only used in Zwitserland and Belgium? (If true, it would be a bit like saying in some dialects colour is written as color, while the latter is only(?) used in the States?)
- mejutoco 4y agoBoth of those examples sound correct to me, yes. Dialects are usually used in particular geographical areas, there is no contradiction there.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoYou can get a very close analog by comparing English numbers (base 1,000) to Chinese numbers (base 10,000). The terminology coincides (with a couple asterisks) for numbers below 10,000, but above 10,000 it's essentially impossible to do mental conversion of numbers even though all the digits are the same. Trying to operate simultaneously in a base 20 system and a base 10 system would be much worse than that, since all the digits would be different between representations.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoEnglish eleven to nineteen don't have a match in base-10 numerals either.
- dhosek 4y agoAlthough thirteen to nineteen show a clear connection to the older style of saying the ones place before the tens place (“four and twenty blackbirds baked into a pie…”). Spanish has special words for eleven (once—pronounced ohn-say) to fifteen (quince) before moving to a standard form for sixteen (dieciséis—ten and six) through nineteen diecinueve—ten and nine).