There are 8 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Little-endian Numeral System?
From: Dustfinger Batailleur
1b. Re: Little-endian Numeral System?
From: Dustfinger Batailleur
1c. Re: Little-endian Numeral System?
From: Kelvin Jackson
1d. Re: Little-endian Numeral System?
From: C. Brickner
1e. Re: Little-endian Numeral System?
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
1f. Re: Little-endian Numeral System?
From: Padraic Brown
1g. Re: Little-endian Numeral System?
From: Alex Fink
2.1. Re: THEORY: Long and short vowels association.
From: Padraic Brown
Messages
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1a. Little-endian Numeral System?
Posted by: "Dustfinger Batailleur" [email protected]
Date: Sat Aug 17, 2013 10:15 am ((PDT))
Are there any natural languages that place the least significant digit
first?
Messages in this topic (7)
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1b. Re: Little-endian Numeral System?
Posted by: "Dustfinger Batailleur" [email protected]
Date: Sat Aug 17, 2013 10:17 am ((PDT))
Specifically, consistently and with large numbers (i.e. not in compound
words like "fourteen").
On 17 August 2013 13:15, Dustfinger Batailleur <[email protected]>wrote:
> Are there any natural languages that place the least significant digit
> first?
>
Messages in this topic (7)
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1c. Re: Little-endian Numeral System?
Posted by: "Kelvin Jackson" [email protected]
Date: Sat Aug 17, 2013 10:41 am ((PDT))
On Aug 17, 2013, at 13:17, Dustfinger Batailleur <[email protected]> wrote:
> Specifically, consistently and with large numbers (i.e. not in compound
> words like "fourteen").
While there's no reason a language *couldn't* do that, there's a good reason
that they don't: the larger and more significant digits are, as their name
suggests, much more important to the meaning than the smaller ones. If, say,
1001 soldiers are coming towards your village, it's much more important to know
that there are at least a thousand of them than it is to know about the last 1.
To answer your original question: many languages, such as German, use
little-endian schemes up to 100 (zB "vier-und-neunzig" 94), but I don't know of
a language that goes any higher than that with a similar system.
Also, FWIW, numbers higher than a thousand tend to have come into use fairly
recently, since people had very little need to count higher than the thousands
before then.
>
>
> On 17 August 2013 13:15, Dustfinger Batailleur <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> Are there any natural languages that place the least significant digit
>> first?
>>
Messages in this topic (7)
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1d. Re: Little-endian Numeral System?
Posted by: "C. Brickner" [email protected]
Date: Sat Aug 17, 2013 10:45 am ((PDT))
And let's not forget the four-and-twenty blackbirds that were baked in a pie.
:-)
Charlie
----- Original Message -----
On Aug 17, 2013, at 13:17, Dustfinger Batailleur <[email protected]> wrote:
> Specifically, consistently and with large numbers (i.e. not in compound
> words like "fourteen").
While there's no reason a language *couldn't* do that, there's a good reason
that they don't: the larger and more significant digits are, as their name
suggests, much more important to the meaning than the smaller ones. If, say,
1001 soldiers are coming towards your village, it's much more important to know
that there are at least a thousand of them than it is to know about the last 1.
To answer your original question: many languages, such as German, use
little-endian schemes up to 100 (zB "vier-und-neunzig" 94), but I don't know of
a language that goes any higher than that with a similar system.
Also, FWIW, numbers higher than a thousand tend to have come into use fairly
recently, since people had very little need to count higher than the thousands
before then.
>
>
> On 17 August 2013 13:15, Dustfinger Batailleur <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> Are there any natural languages that place the least significant digit
>> first?
>>
Messages in this topic (7)
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1e. Re: Little-endian Numeral System?
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Sat Aug 17, 2013 11:24 am ((PDT))
On 17 August 2013 19:40, Kelvin Jackson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> To answer your original question: many languages, such as German, use
> little-endian schemes up to 100 (zB "vier-und-neunzig" 94), but I don't
> know of a language that goes any higher than that with a similar system.
>
>
AFAIK Arabic does. Or at least Classical and Modern Standard Arabic do. I
don't know how the various Arabic languages/dialects fare here. The
interesting part is that when written in numerals, Arabic numbers follow
the way they are spoken: least-significant figure first. Since Arabic is
written right-to-left, this means numbers are written exactly as we write
them, and can be read left-to-right by us correctly :P. And interestingly,
at least in the Maghreb (Morocco, Tunisia, etc.), figures are actually
written left-to-right, despite the rest of the text being written
right-to-left!
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (7)
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1f. Re: Little-endian Numeral System?
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sat Aug 17, 2013 1:01 pm ((PDT))
>> To answer your original question: many languages, such as German, use
>> little-endian schemes up to 100 (zB "vier-und-neunzig" 94), but I don't
>> know of a language that goes any higher than that with a similar system.
>>
> AFAIK Arabic does. Or at least Classical and Modern Standard Arabic do. I
> don't know how the various Arabic languages/dialects fare here. The
> interesting part is that when written in numerals, Arabic numbers follow
> the way they are spoken: least-significant figure first. Since Arabic is
> written right-to-left, this means numbers are written exactly as we write
> them, and can be read left-to-right by us correctly :P. And interestingly,
> at least in the Maghreb (Morocco, Tunisia, etc.), figures are actually
> written left-to-right, despite the rest of the text being written
> right-to-left!
Begs the question, as regards counting chickens and their eggs: was pre-numerate
Arabic little-endian as regards numerals or were they like other languages
around
in being big-endian, and when numeralism / writing was introduced, altered the
spoken numbers to fit the writing?
Padraic
> --
> Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
>
> http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
> http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
>
Messages in this topic (7)
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1g. Re: Little-endian Numeral System?
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Sun Aug 18, 2013 4:04 am ((PDT))
On Sat, 17 Aug 2013 20:24:15 +0200, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
<[email protected]> wrote:
>On 17 August 2013 19:40, Kelvin Jackson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> To answer your original question: many languages, such as German,
Many? Are you sure that it's more than a European sprachbund sort of thing?
(... though I guess the below is a partial answer)
>> use
>> little-endian schemes up to 100 (zB "vier-und-neunzig" 94), but I don't
>> know of a language that goes any higher than that with a similar system.
>
>AFAIK Arabic does. Or at least Classical and Modern Standard Arabic do.
Hm, Wikipedia on Arabic grammar suggests that this is also just a case of ones
before tens and doesn't extending further. e.g.:
| Formal: alfāni wa-tis`u mi'atin wa-thnatā `ashratan sanatan '2,912 years'
thousand and-nine hundred and-two ten years (coarsely)
| Spoken: alfayn wa-tis` mīya wa-ithna`shar sana(tan) '(after) 2,912 years'
Only difference in makeup here is univerbation of the "two-ten". Same order.
Alex
Messages in this topic (7)
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2.1. Re: THEORY: Long and short vowels association.
Posted by: "Padraic Brown" [email protected]
Date: Sat Aug 17, 2013 8:34 pm ((PDT))
> Are there rules against reviving old posts?
Not as far as I know!
> 2013/7/3 Padraic Brown <[email protected]>:
>>> From: Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>
>>
>>>>> In some old e-mail conversations with Justin B. Rye, I could
> get some
>>>>> details of what he imagined for an English spelling reform.
>>>>> Apparently, most English words *look* as if they ended in
> consonant,
>>>>> because all long vowels would get a final <y>, <w>
> or <h> :
>>>>>
>>>>> be -> biy
>>>>> shampoo -> shampuw
>>>>> law -> loh
>>>>> Ra -> Rah
>>
>> For me, at least, schemes like this render the language all but unreadable.
> One
>> thing I think such "reformers" don't take into account is
> that I don't think we
>> read letter by letter so much as by overall word and phrase shape. In other
>> words, "caught" is a shape; "laugh" is a shape. And
> it's the shape of the word
>> that we read more than the letters contained in the word, which, in all
> honesty,
>> have very little to do with what is actually pronounced.
>
> Isn't this more true for English just because of the irregularity of
> its orthography?
I doubt it's simply *because of* the orthography, though it may well be an
interesting side-effect.
Personally, I think everyone who learns to read, and who reads a lot and
eventually comes to such a familiarity with written words that, regardless
of language, he ends up reading the shapes more than the letters.
> Are there evidences that Italians, for instance, read words "by shape"
> to the same extend that Anglophones do?
Dunno. If they read half as fast as they talk, they *must* be flying indeed! ;))
>> So the reformers are
>> all gung-ho to solve a real problem -- but the problem they want to solve
> is
>> an irrelevant one! "kot" and "laef" end up being
> stumbling blocks rather than
>> helps to quick reading and sure understanding.
>
> Maybe the real benefit would be for those who are learning the
> language right now
I would agree in so far as such a learner could read a limited number of
probably
rather simple introductory texts, and could conceivably write out a speech
prepared in his horrific orthography and read it out and be understood. I do
think
he would find it more of a roadblock than a help in the long run, though. No
one
else will be able to read what he writes, and when he finally graduates from his
play-pen orthography, he will find himself literally back at square one, having
to
both unlearn everything he's just been taught as well as learn everything anew.
I don't think I need to stress that I am anti spelling "reform" in just about
every
shape and flavor it comes in. The benefits of just buckling down and doing the
hard work of learning to read the damn language at the start will far outweigh
any theoretical benefits in "reforming" the spelling. And anyway, if such
endeavors were really all that beneficial, the Arabs, the Greeks, the Russians
and the Chinese would have "reformed" to the Latin alphabet 50 to 100 years
ago or so.
Padraic
Messages in this topic (35)
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