Yet another competing numbering system. This one is the culturally correct one to use in certain parts to Papua New Guinea, who count by assigning body part names to each number, sequentially by an imaginary line on their bodies.
Advantages: no loan words, system (mostly) invented by primitive people, decimal, can cope with arbitrarily large numbers, is a place system, has nether regions. Numbers with * are somewhat transparent (1 noes, 2 eyes, 5 fingers to a hand, 10 toes)
Disadvantages: still needs more cowbell. wan and tu already exist and don't fit well into a body part system.
0 ala (nothing)
* 1 nena (nose) (or wan)
* 2 oko (eyes) (or tu)
3 kute (ears) (sum of everything inbetween)
4 uta (mouth)
* 5 luka (hand)
6 insa (belly)
7 monsi (butt)
8 palisa/lupa (netherregions, obviously depends on who's counting)
9 noka (leg)
* 10 noka pini (toes) (nena ala would be proper decimal)
mi jo e suno sike pi nanpa kute luka. tomo mi li nanpa oko oko kute nena.
I'm 35. I'm at building number 2231.
Not sure about the age, language vary about their preferred form. Even without "big" number, we should be able to say, jan lili mi li jo e tempo pi sike suno tu. Or something like that.
Exponential and Scientific Notation
suno pi ma Apata li linja ma pi ma Inli pi nanpa oko sike luka palisa unpa noki pini wawa pi oko kute.
the sun of land of the Avatars is the earth line of the land of England of number 2 circle 5 8 multiply 10 to power of 1 3.
Pandora (Alpha Centari) is 2.58 * 10^13 Imperial miles away.
nanpa pi sijelo jan pi ma Papuwanijukini
nanpa pi sijelo jan pi ma Papuwanijukini
Last edited by janMato on Thu Jan 07, 2010 12:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Re: nanpa pi sijelo jan pi ma Papuwanijukini
Er, 'sike suno' "around the sun" not "a round sun"
tenpo tu la jan lili mi li sike e suno.
ma Inlan
ma Pantowa li linja ala li weka ...we don't have a terminology for tensors (or vectors, for that matter) and the rest is just calquy and ungrammatical. I think a wholesale rethinking is called for.
And I still think recycling content words as numbers is a bad idea (including 'luka' and especially 'mute' and a 'ale').
tenpo tu la jan lili mi li sike e suno.
ma Inlan
ma Pantowa li linja ala li weka ...we don't have a terminology for tensors (or vectors, for that matter) and the rest is just calquy and ungrammatical. I think a wholesale rethinking is called for.
And I still think recycling content words as numbers is a bad idea (including 'luka' and especially 'mute' and a 'ale').