nd-notation. How to count anything in tp?

[janpona120]

the idea was that the community of speakers would live such simple lives that things in that quantity would not be needed.

Here is still one point of view, where long numbers may be useful. See this situation from "911". Simple life is good. But, sometimes we need emergency medical care, and consultation in phone mode for tourists from other countries.

• a "911"-local service <=> a native and tp-speaker <=> a tp-speaker (a tourist)

tp is the simplest way to save a life, who do not know local language: swahili, korean, hindi... Long numbers and fractions may be used in a distant (phone) diagnosis: blood pressure, temperature, quantity of pills (drops)...

sijelo ike seme? (where is a sore?)

"toki pona" means "a talk is capable to rescue a life", too.

[janKipo]

Nice practical point, although the tp world sometimes seems to be without ("free of") telephones and sphygnometers and the like as well.

[janpona120]

tp-math also is compatible with a life in the eco-villages.

li pali e tomo mute, li seli e moku tawa kulupu jan, jan ni li wile e nasin nanpa:

27 iron nails -- palisa kiwen pi nanpa tu nanpa luka tu
52 plates -- poki supa moku pi nanpa luka nanpa tu

pu-math allows to pronounce "27": luka luka luka luka luka tu".
For "52" it sounds lulling: luka..(at all 10 times) ......luka tu... and sle-e-e-ep
nd-math even "152" makes simple: nanpa one nanpa luka nanpa tu

In my opinion, tp has good potential to become an auxlang,
though for more simple situations than Esperanto can describe.

from: http://gen.ecovillage.org/node/5053/

[janKipo]

Well, there is the problem that 'nanpa n' is the ordinal nth, but the use of 'pi' my over come that. Note also that tp does have (unfortunately, usually but not here), 'mute' for 20 and 'ale' for 100. so its basic system is not worse that this revision up to around 500. The complexity of some numerals: 'luka tu wan'. say is an aesthetic problem, as is the constantly repeated 'nanpa'. Still, this is about as good as can be hoped for within the present framework.

[natan]

Am I the only one happy to have/use the basic number/counting system only?

kili ala — no apples
kili wan — one apple
kili tu — two apples
kili mute — many apples
kili ale — countless apples

Why do people have/see a need to express any number (as per those of English) in toki pona?

[janKipo]

I suppose because it sometimes makes a difference. If there are four people at the table you need four meals and many (more than two) may be either too few or too many (so wasteful). Then there is the matter of money, which comes in various denominations, which make a difference when you come to pay for things (or even one thing). And so; you get the idea.
Finally, there is the matter that we use numbers as names and that naming system is set up for having ten digits (at least). You can't -- in any natural way -- do a telephone number in tp.

[Baerdric]

I've been playing with this and I'm fairly happy with a base three positional notation system. But it has to be backwards. toki pona is ostensibly a spoken language, since "internet computer forums" is probably more tedious to say than counting up the mutes in a million.

As a spoken language, it's hard to tell where the place columns are. Spoken English gets around that with place names - hundreds, thousands etc. But we don't have those names.

We can get around it by declaring that we are about to say a "nanpa mute" and then listing the wans, kulupu wans, kulupu kulupu wans etc, in that order, without naming them. We will always know here we are because we start with ones. Like this:

Code: Select all

    wans   KWs   KKWs
1    wan
2    tu
3    ala   wan
4    wan   wan    (remember, that would be "nanpa mute wan wan". It gets more parsimonious as it increases, don't worry)
5    tu    wan
6    ala   tu
7    wan   tu
8    tu    tu
9    ala   ala     wan
...
28    wan   ala    ala    wan
etc.


So "nanpa mute wan ala tu wan" is one, plus no threes, plus two nines, plus one twenty seven. You have to get used to it but that's immediately recognizable to me as 1+(2x9)+(3x9) which is 1+(5X9) or forty six.

Of course it would be much better with a base 5 system, but this has the advantage of not requiring more number words, not appropriating the words for many and several, and having an historic base in Arabic hand counting. You can quickly show any range of numbers with two fingers and your thumb on one hand.

I don't imagine anyone will pick this up, because most people don't want to learn math of any kind. I never do. But this is really easy and retains much of the toki pona simplistic philosophy, IMHO. You can say how many fish you caught without having to sit down for it. It even makes a better story telling device, because your audience (once they understand it) hears (with increasing drama) "I caught one, plus three, plus eighteen, plus twenty seven, plus 162!" ... That's 211 fish, nanpa mute wan wan tu wan tu kala.

[janKipo]

The reverse order is a clever addition to the tresimal system. Thanks. I would still like to see order of magnitude expressions for the purposes they are used for( so far we have only 'mute') . I don't imagine this or any nondecimal system has a chance of success. And it still doesn't help with digital identifiers like ID numbers.
Btw probably 'nanpa suli', "large" not "numerous"

[Baerdric]

Yeah, it's hard to wrap your head around different bases, much less reversed order of places.

But I used nanpa "mute" to denote that each number was a "multiple" of the previous one and not simply the more common (and still useable) addition of each spoken number.

[janpona120]

Reply to Natan:

Am I the only one happy to have/use the basic number/counting system only?

I also am happy when all people around me have own apple, each.

Reply to Baerdric:

That's 211 fish, nanpa mute wan wan tu wan tu kala.

211 fish -- "kala pi nanpa tu nanpa wan nanpa wan"

Reply to janKipo:

You can't -- in any natural way -- do a telephone number in tp.

A natural way is coherent with a planet habit: decimal system and arabic notation. I feel that it is the simplest approach.