sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

[jan_Loliko]

mi lon lipu sin pi toki pona li lon tomo toki sin li pilin pona mute. sona toki sin pi toki pona li kama. ni li pona mute kin. taso li pona lili tawa mi tan ni: mi pilin pona la ona li sona pona ala. nimi "mute" li sama nanpa luka luka luka luka tan seme? nimi "ale" li ken nanpa suli lili lon tenpo ni, taso nanpa ante li ken suli mute kin: nanpa "ale" li nanpa ale ala kin! ona li ike ala ike?

tenpo ni la mi toki e ni: toki luka tu li mute pi toki tu tu tu wan anu toki luka wan en toki luka ante? ona li ken toki e ijo suli tu ni lon toki Inli: seven languages anu two sign languages. tenpo mute la ona li ken ala ike. taso tenpo lili la ona li ken ike mute. jan li toki e nimi "luka" la jan ante pi sitelen toki ala li ken ala ken sona e nimi "nimi luka"? tenpo ni la nimi "luka" li sama nimi nanpa ale. taso mi sona ala e ni: ona li pona ala pona? mi pilin e ni: ona li ike mute.

[jan-ante]

[Ose]

jan Sonja li toki e ni: jan li wile toki suli la ona li ken kepeken e nasin ni.
nasin ni li pona lili tawa ona. taso ona li wile kulupu pona pi toki pona.

sina wile ala kepeken e nasin nanpa sin la, o kepeken ala e nasin sin!

ale li pona,

jan Ose

[janKipo]

My glee knew bounds when I read jan Sonja's suggrestion for nanpa suli. It was too much and
too little; it conceded that the nanpasulists had a valid complaint but it gave them nowhere
enough to satisfy. They want millions and billions and trillions ands she gave scores and
hundreds.

But the real problem is with the concession. Do we, in fact, need big numbers, not only in Lao-lao
land but in ordinary life? Well, sure, we have to write checks or pay bills some way, balance our
accounts. That reminds me that 'mani' is the most glaringly ill-advised word in the 123 (is that
what we are up to?); it doesn't fit into the imagined world (see something in one of those old guys'
books, maybe even the DDJ). But anyhow, let's consider what is involved here really: you have
to match what the bill says (or at least what it allows you to get away with). What that number is is
irrelevant. In short numbers in these kinds of transaction are just a shorthand for comparing tally
sticks (or knots or beads or whatever). The Woomaroonga or whatever may not know how many
spears he has, but he knows when one is missing and when he has an extra. Numbers are a way
of speeding things up and and going to higher and higher levels of transactions, but these are not
parts of ordinary life: I can't really say I can perceive the difference between a million and a billion
beyond that one is bigger than the other. I don't get a better grasp of the size of the universe if I
am told the number of light-years (which I also don't grasp) it is across nor of an electron if I know
its size in whatever-meters (what comes after "pico"?). "Huge" and "ginormous" do it for me for
all practical purposes.

But without big numbers, you can't do mathematics in tp. No, you do mathematics in
mathematic-speak (or -write), another language altogether. Why would you want to do it in tp,
which is ill-suited for the purpose? (And, of course, you actually can do math in tp, though at infinite
tediosity, since arithmetic -- Turing version, at least -- comes down to comparisons and adding
one).

The one thing we really need big numbers for is addresses (real street addresses, telephone
numbers, etc.). But these are just names and thus off-line adjectives. Writing them is no problem
at all, since we can use the familiar notation; for speaking, maybe a standardized way of reading
that notation in tp. That is an addition (not strictly to the language, because these things are just
proper names, not quantifiers [wehatever people will inevitably try to do with them]) which would
be more in line with tp philosophy than adding a few more number words and feeding the
ravening hunger of the nanpasulists.

Besides, using 'mute' and 'ale' in this way introduces yet more ambiguities into language which
already sometimes taxes one's garden-pathing patience.

[jan Ote]

[jan-ante]

[janKipo]

Dates are, of course, just addresses in time, so a solution for addresses generally solves dates as well. Age is admittedly a bit trickier, but I am at an age where the details don't seem very important (my wife, for example, is ten years younger than I am, but we think of ourselves as be contemporaries -- except on trivia contests, where I can do the 40s). The internet age problem is more acute -- How can I tell a 13-year-old that I am 16 and get her to meet me in the dark? We don't even have good triage(or quartage or ...) terms: infant, prepub. tweener, teen, legal, adult, middle aged, geezer, though we could get them at some cost in wordage. We could go by milestones in our culture (guys don't have long pants times any more, but girls have bras and the like and we can think of something, driving, voting, drinking -- legally, ..., social security, elder care...),Or, of course, we can say when we were born (see above -- not that that problem has been solved yet)

I like "trinary;" it goes well with "binary," and the "-al" forms don't work at this level. I suspect this goes back to missing "ternus" on some pop quiz in my youth.

I agree that 'mani' doesn't belong, but note that it is no necessary part of 'esun.' which is, I gather, about trading. i.e., swapping. And money, when it was real, was meant as a vicar for goods and services to be used in trading in this way. Now that money has no real meaning (as witness the disappearance of trillions that were totally free from any goods or services -- and their replacement by others almost equally unfounded), it has no role in esun or only a very remote one.

[janKipo]

Oh, and talking about the Superior Man is not likely to have much influence on a Daoist oriented site.

[jan-ante]

[janKipo]