sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Tinkerers Anonymous: Some people can't help making changes to "fix" Toki Pona. This is a playground for their ideas.
Tokiponidistoj: Iuj homoj nepre volas fari ŝanĝojn por "ripari" Tokiponon. Jen ludejo por iliaj ideoj.
aikidave
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by aikidave »

Oh please, not a ternary system. I spent way too much time working in base 3, when learning to program computers mute luka + years ago! I still get nightmares about it!
I like being able to count on my fingers again in base 10. :)
jan Sowelilili
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by jan Sowelilili »

New forum. On Yahoo, I had decided not to get involved in arguments about nanpasulism, but this is not Yahoo anymore, so I'll just say what I think about the topic once - and then probably move away once more.

toki pona does not have large numbers because it inherently does not have the concept of large numbers. large numbers are foreign to toki pona. we just have to live with it!

it is inevitable, that in our everyday conversation we find the need to mention foreign words in. This does not only apply to numbers. and within the context of a given conversation it may be practical or contingent to use the foreign word if it is familiar to the interlocutor. so I have no problem with saying nanpa Inli "sixty four" or writing nanpa "64". This is no different to ma tomo "aix-en-Provence", or telo jelo "Budweiser". (I prefer to always put un-tokiponised foreign words in quotes).

We do it in English and every other language all the time. For breakfast, I had brioche and croissants, for lunch pizza with some tabouleh, and kheer for desert. With my curry dinner I had the choice of chapatti or naan. These are all types of pan. the difference is that English eventually assimilates these differentiated concepts and then the specific words become part of the language.

And this is essentially what nanpasulists are trying to do to - assimilate the (currently foreign) concept of large numbers into toki pona. But they do this using the argument that we already have this concept or that the concept is essential for meaningful discourse. Not in toki pona, it isn't. Yes, if I am using toki pona to discuss ideas which are inherently foreign to toki pona I may need large numbers. But then again, if i am using toki pona to discuss ideas which are inherently foreign to toki pona I may need many many other words which are not easily expressed in toki pona. Should we assimilate all of these concepts? I don't think so!

(Note: I am not saying that the concept of a large quantity, or a quantity being larger than another is foreign to toki pona - it isn't and we can express that very well. [or at least, we can express it. whether we can express it well is a whole other controversy]. It is the idea of having a precise name for large quantities that is foreign. In other words, nanpasulists want/expect toki pona speakers to have a concept of 64. An 65, and 66, and 67 ...).

personally, I would prefer to see the wiki page conceding luka=5, mute=20, ale=100 expunged. Especially mute and ale! Imagine trying to ask a person whether they want to withdraw all of their money or only $200. sina wile e mani ale anu mani ale ale? I confess to occasionally using luka (although I prefer to use it with nanpa... i.e. nanpa luka tu for 7 rather than luka tu. luka tu just makes me think of two hands.I am happy for that to remain one of the many unofficial word phrases that we use everyday to be understood in context without having a page on the wiki to open the nanpasulism can of worms.
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jan Ote
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by jan Ote »

jan-ante wrote:he overlooked the most important application of numbers in the internet communication - age. it is one of the most popular topics in chat (alongside with sex and location).
Well, I've never asked anybody in the Internet about his age. What's the real difference between person 23- and 24-years-old? Doesn't matter. "Here" it matters what you write, not how old are you. On the other hand, in real life one just see how old somebody is, then no problem.
ja rozumeju malo. but this is not a problem: machine translation between slavic languages works fine
:)
2. that is a big question, you can read here a little, but the best article in wikipedia is in russian, so use a machine translation ;).
briefly, with ternary system you dont need the special words for 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and the expressions are much shorter than in binary system
Thanks, I can still read Russian without translators ;) True, this article shows that:
  • 3-nary ;) system don't need special words for 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
    But it's obvious. The same way ANY base-N positional system doesn't need special words for N, N+1, N+2...
  • expressions in 3-nary are shorter than in 2-nary system.
    But it's obvious. For ANY two positional systems: when N>M, then a string of digits needed to express any number in base-N system is shorter than in base-M system. (For "any" number which is greater or equal M; for x<M, both notations are identical).
So, why use base-3 system when base-10 is better in these terms? And base-60, sexigesimal, ancient Babylonian system is even much better? ;)

jan Sowelilili en janKipo o!
You are using a term "nanpasulism", "nanpasulists". I thought that "suli" means primarily "big" (literally) for physical size of an object. Then it gets (figurative) meaning: "important". But it doesn't mean "numerous", because this idea it's already covered by "mute". So I use "nanpa mute" for a "big number", "a number [of] mute, number of big amount. Am I wrong?
Or is it from "numbers [are] important"?
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by janKipo »

jan Sowlilili o pona mute a! toki pona wile ala jo e pilin pi nanpa suli (anu nanpa mute kin)

jan Ote o nanpa li suli sama soweli Elepan. lon la nanpa li mute taso nanpa wan ala li mute taso ken la ona li suli sama E43 or 3.
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jan Ote
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by jan Ote »

jan Kipo o, mi lukin e soweli Elepan. ona li suli. tan ni la mi toki e ni: soweli Elepan li suli. taso mi ken lukin ala e nanpa. a a a!
ali li pona.
janKipo
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by janKipo »

Well, backing up a step, 'nanpa mute' means "many numbers" so can't the right thing to say about any particular number. 'mute nanpa' is "numerical amount," say, but that seems to be about things, not numbers (and, of course, the point of all this is just that tp doesn't have numerical amounts for most amounts possible). So the solution seems to be to give 'suli' another metaphor to cover being far up the scale of numerical values. Note that this may not be a metaphor in tp; it might be part of the internal meaning of the word (just as "big" for numbers is scarcely a metaphor in English -- nowadays anyhow). In any case, the term, 'nanpa suli,' is now traditional in meta-tp for this question -- among the oldest and certainly the most persistent in tp's brief history.
jan-ante
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by jan-ante »

aikidave wrote:Oh please, not a ternary system. I spent way too much time working in base 3, when learning to program computers mute luka + years ago! I still get nightmares about it!
yuo hate knowledge?? oh no.. i am so disappointed. but wat was the problem with ternary system? anyway it is easier than decimal
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by jan-ante »

jak Ote wrote:
So, why use base-3 system when base-10 is better in these terms? And base-60, sexigesimal, ancient Babylonian system is even much better? ;)
because we dont want to have some special words for 3 ... 9. wa have already special words for wan and tu. so i suggest to make a maximal use of this. to me the maximal use is a ternary system
one more interesting idea. but if so, should we define esun as exchange?

I like 'swap' better or even just 'trade'
to me these are synonyms. but why trade is better? it is less general
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jan Ote
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by jan Ote »

janKipo wrote:'nanpa mute' means "many numbers" so can't the right thing to say about any particular number.
I've talked about it with my jan lili last week, preparing an article about numbers in tp, and he noticed the same - suprise to me! - "nanpa mute" can mean "many numbers". But then he added that "number of many" is ok too. If it couldn't mean "number [of] many", then... how "nanpa wan" could mean "number one", not "one number"? Does "nanpa tu" mean "number two" or "two numbers"? Or both meanings are correct? Beeing new in the language we agreed that we cannot reject one or the other meaning, bacause we can't see any language means to distinguish them.
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Re: sin pi toki nanpa tan jan Sonja

Post by jan-ante »

jan Sowelilili wrote: so I have no problem with saying nanpa Inli "sixty four" or writing nanpa "64"
just witghout "nanpa", because "nanpa" is ordinal, ijo nanpa 64 means the 64th object, not 64 objects.
this is actually the way people do in internet. as tokipona is not used as a spoken language, it works fine
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