Toki Pona Forums

janMato wrote:I usually use the official system that jan Sonja proposed and write them as if they are roman numerals. So my age is MLLLTT. The Roman numeral system falls apart at about about 150 or 300 or so.

I like your idea of putting jan Sonja's official advanced number system, in roman numeral format (but without the subtraction for 4, 9, etc like the Romans did).

tenpo mun pini la tenpo MMLLLT la mi sike e suno.

the verb krokodili means to speak English (or whatever the national language is) instead of Esperanto in a setting where people are supposed to be practicing Esperanto.

I've thought about this again recently.

noka seems to have nearly dissapeared, but I think we could use it for numbers. Combined with jan, it can be interesting.

Something like:

luka luka noka noka - 20 because we don't have more than two hands or feet, jan takes over at 25.

I think using the accepted system for everything else is fine too, but I feel like the words "mute" and "ali" shouldn't be used for such specific numbers.

I'm also interested mostly in making numbers reasonable to be spoken (or thought). So, I'm curious what others would think of kind of squishing things together in something like this:

lu'luka t'tu = luka luka tu tu = 14
ja'jan wa'tu = jan jan wan tu = 53

lu'luka no'noka t'tu = luka luka noka noka tu tu = 24

And for larger numbers and dates just reading them out is fine I think with the current system, just using the numbers as digits.

1998 - wa'luk't'tu luk't'tu luk't'wan = wan, luka tu tu, luka tu tu, luka tu wan

for decimals, it seems the most officially unofficial use of pu is a general marker (Like a comma?). Even if not, would anyone angainst just using it as such, or freeing it up as the "general seperator" that jan Mato has mentioned would be useful. Also allowing relatively easy to parse:

15.27 - lu'luka noka pu jan tu

I also think using jan Mato's useful roman numerals could work well for writing things in a condensed manner.Some examples:

lu'luka t'tu = luka luka tu tu = 14 = LLTT
ja'jan wa'tu = jan jan wan tu = 53 = JJWT

lu'luka no'noka t'tu = luka luka noka noka tu tu = 24 =LLNNTT

There's definitely room to improve, but I'm curious what people here think of this.

mi pana e pona tawa sina mute tan ni: sina lukin e sitelen mi.

edit:

Thinking a bit more having a 100 would be useful as well. Ali might be much, but it could work. Maybe mute for 100 and ali for something larger.

janMato wrote:I usually use the official system that jan Sonja proposed ...

oh, where could I find that?

mi pilin e ni: ona li lipu ni:

http://en.tokipona.org/wiki/Advanced_numbers

Jan KoAla wrote:I've thought about this again recently.

noka seems to have nearly dissapeared, but I think we could use it for numbers. Combined with jan, it can be interesting.

I would have to disagree with your statement that noka seems to have nearly disappeared. I use noka often and noka has been used for too many years to kill it off now.

iulius wrote:

janMato wrote:I usually use the official system that jan Sonja proposed ...

oh, where could I find that?

You can find her system for higher numbers here: http://en.tokipona.org/wiki/Advanced_numbers