Interestingly in Catalan the break seems to occur between sixteen and seventeen - quinze, setze, disset, perhaps because it is half way between Italian and Spanish. In Latin from which both languages derive it seems to come between ten and eleven - decem, undecim. No obvious logic. Not that this has much to do with the lute. Monica
----Original Message---- From: [email protected] Date: 29/01/2018 13:43 To: <[email protected]> Subj: [LUTE] Re: four and twenty Rainer & other linguaphiles-- I find it interesting that different languages have different "breakpoints" in the teens: Spanish between 15 and 16 (quince, dieciseis), Italian 16 and 17 (seidici, diciassette), English 12 and 13 (twelve, thirteen)--the ones I know. What's that about? Leonard Williams -----Original Message----- From: Rainer <[email protected]> To: Lute net <[email protected]> Sent: Mon, Jan 29, 2018 4:38 am Subject: [LUTE] four and twenty A clarification: I always thought that there must have been (sort of) an official reform. At least teachers must have a common opinion what to teach children. Apparently there was none in England. In Germany from time to time "mathematicians" propose to change the German system since the current system makes learning Math hard for the children. Of course, this has nothing to do with mathematics :) I guess such a reform (in Germany) would be very confusing for several decades. Switching from shillings and pennies to 100 pence per pound must have been hard. Do many people still think in yards, miles, pints, ...? Cheers, Rainer PS A new standard kilogram will probably come soon. PPS Coming back to lute matters: most people describe string tensions in terms of Kg which is plain nonsense since Kg is the unit of matter. What should be used is Kilopond which is equal to the magnitude of the force exerted by one kilogram of mass in a 9.80665 m/s2 gravitational field. However, officially kilopond should not be used any more (since c1980). I still prefer to talk about a tension of 3 Kilopond instead of 29.4 Newton :) To get on or off this list see list information at [1]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
