Toki Pona Forums

A video of me counting thirteen candies (suwi), in toki pona, using base three reverse positional notation, over the course of 5 minutes. With hand signs!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMTFr6O ... e=youtu.be

Nice, but I notice two useful additions and one error. Additions: 'wan' and 'kulupu' (and 'kulupu kulupu' and probably so on) for places. That may be too many and too complicated, but a name every three-five columns is a good idea (see all the world systems, though the E does do every column).
Error: not 'wan kulupu' etc. but 'kulupu wan' etc.
I like the fingers, but that is usefully extended to decimals and beyond. Still. this is a natural for tp or tresimals.

I don't know if that was really naming place columns or just talking about the groups.

Comes to the same thing if you actually say them 'wan wan en kulupu wan en kulupu kulupu wan' anu 'nanpa mute wan wan wan' anu 'luka luka tu wan'

Yes, I think you are right. That's why I hesitated (quibbled with myself) over stating that I wasn't naming them. Did I accidentally name them by attempting to refer to them in the only way I know how to do? That would be an "organic" addition.

If it were not in the context of me laying out candies, I think I would have said kulupu nanpa, kulupu kulupu nanpa.

Or,hmmm... I'm going to study words like pi, la and en today, maybe pi is what i want - kulupu pi nanpa?

just 'kulupu nanpa', 'pi' requires two following words. Now, it is not clear whether the next step is 'kulupu kulupu nanpa' or 'kulupu pi kulupu nanpa', that is, whether we group groups and then note that the members of the bottom level group are numbers or start with groups of numbers and then group them (I keep thinking that one or the other of several set theories ought to make this clear, though at least L-sets won't distinguish them and that may be he best solution of all). In any case, 'nanpa' is probably redundant in this context. And 'kulupu' gets overwhelming fairly early on, suggesting some sort of power notation like all the standard ones (based on thousands or 10,100s or whatever) and, of course, using these (whatever they may be) for vague general numbers, skipping the details below the top levels, "$2M" for example, for what some bean counter probably has down to the penny.

I haven't worked this through yet, but I wonder about some way of saying for large numbers in the range of millions, "kulupu nanpa mute tu wan wan" (meaning, "a base 3 reversed positional number with 14 place columns") like we might say "a 7 digit salary" in English.

nanpa mute supa tu wan wan?
nanpa e ante tu wan wan?
trillions
nanpa mute ante ala ala ala wan?

The first few work in principle, but 'nanpa e ante' is ungrammatical. I don't like either 'supa' or 'ante' for "column" or "place", but don't have much better to offer. Still pretty unwieldy.

Yeah, I was kinda going for "levels" with supa and "degree of change" with ante. Obviously needs work...

Propose to give a name for your counting system.

Also, ask to describe where this system is more useful, and where it is not. Thanks.