Western style numbers?

[eugenek]

While eating lunch this afternoon I was reading the USA Today newspaper. There was an article about the death penalty in China. There is also a picture of a woman being led to her execution by three uniformed Chinese in Beijing. In the place where I would expect a nametag there were western style numbers. One of them was "110121". I thought this was kind of odd. I had assumed the Chinese would have there own numbering system considering the system they have for writing words. Are western style numbers globally understood / used?

On the cuff of one of the officer's sleeves were the letters "JING CHA". So, now I'm wondering why was that there? Can the average educated Chinese person read that? I know whenever I see Chinese writing I don't have the faintest idea how it should be pronounced. I wouldn't expect a police officer in the US to have Chinese symbols on his uniform.

[SeanF]

Chinese often use Arabic numerals, though they do have their own characters for digits 0-9 (they've always had a decimal system). Pretty much all of the paperwork we got on our little girl had the numerical information (dates, weight, etc.) in Arabic numerals.

As for the "JING CHA," that's pinyin, the official phonetic Chinese spelling. It's not very common yet amongst the general population*, but I'm not surprised to see the government using it.

*There was a news story around recently about the loss of cursive handwriting due to the common usage of computers/phones/blackberries. They mentioned almost as an aside that a lot of young Chinese people aren't learning how to write the Chinese characters like they used to because they enter them into their cell phones using pinyin. So perhaps pinyin will become more widespread in a generation or so.

[Nicolas]

(they've always had a decimal system).

Is this due to our 10 fingers?

[SeanF]

Is this due to our 10 fingers?
I believe that's the prevailing theory. :)

[Nicolas]

Very likely theory of course. Though a erm, decamal (5) would also have been logical when looking at 1 hand, though I assume that people found it handy to count a bit higher than 5 before "switching".

[hhEb09'1]

I believe that's the prevailing theory. :)I thought there was a Theory Of Everything :)

[Nicolas]

In that case, we'd be having 42 fingers, which is nice when playing piano as long as your brain doesn't explode in the process, but quit expensive when buying fingered gloves.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Very likely theory of course. Though a erm, decamal (5) would also have been logical when looking at 1 hand, though I assume that people found it handy to count a bit higher than 5 before "switching".

Yes, a base five system could have easily come about. What I don't understand is that the Japanese came up with a base six system. I'd really like to know where that developed from.

[PhantomWolf]

Chinese often use Arabic numerals

Actually Arabic numerals should really be known as Indian Numerals since they started out there and migrated to Arabia only a few hundred years before entering Europe.

[Celestial Mechanic]

The Mayans used a base 20 system. And the ancient Mesopotamians (I don't know how far back) used base 60 which we still use (sort of) in timekeeping and angle mensuration.

Base 60 ... :think: Maybe Sitchin's Annunaki had six tentacles with ten digits each, hmmm? :lol:

[01101001]

Yes, a base five system could have easily come about. What I don't understand is that the Japanese came up with a base six system. I'd really like to know where that developed from.

One hand? 1-5 are each fingers and 0 is a fist. Two hands let you count 0 to 556.

[eugenek]

Thanks for the info, SeanF.

Oddly, while I was examining the picture I thought of BAUT's 01101001 as well as a binary nightmare Bender had which had a '2' show up.

[01101001]

Wikipedia: Chinese numerals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numerals)

Chinese numerals are characters for writing numbers in Chinese. Today, speakers of Chinese use three numeral systems: the ubiquitous system of Hindu-Arabic numerals, along with two ancient Chinese numeral systems. The huama ([...] lit. "flowery or fancy numbers") system has gradually been supplanted by the Arabic system in writing numbers. The character system is still used and roughly analogous to writing out a number in text. The Chinese character system can be classified as part of the language, but it still counts as a number system. Most people in China now use the Hindu-Arabic system.

[The Supreme Canuck]

One hand? 1-5 are each fingers and 0 is a fist. Two hands let you count 0 to 556.

Hm. That might be it. Logical, at least.

[Nicolas]

Yes, a base five system could have easily come about. What I don't understand is that the Japanese came up with a base six system. I'd really like to know where that developed from.

The nose ;)


6 is also seen as a special number in many cultures. Something like 1*2*3 = 1+2+3 = 2^3 = 6 and the like :). Don't know if that had anything to do with making base 6, 12 or 60 systems. 5 fingers and including the fist seems more likely, and the above pecularities would have automatically followed and raised the status of the number 6.

[Delvo]

Some extinct ancient culture... the Babylonians or Sumerians, maybe, or maybe a bunch of different ones... had a base of 12. They'd count on their fingers by tapping the tip of the thumb to one of the 3 phalangial segments (the spaces between joints, or between the last joint and the tip) of each of the (other) four fingers on the same hand. This makes me suspect that a base 6 could be based on some other physical counting method that we don't think of in our culture, like maybe using extended fingers for five numbers as we do, and a closed fist for the sixth, or using an index finger to tap all five fingertips on the other hand plus the thumb on the same hand.

The Indo-European culture or at least an early European derivation from it was influenced by this early base-12 system enough to have "unique" words for the numbers 11 and 12 instead of "derived" words like the ones that start at 13 (three-teen, four-teen, five-teen...). But the base-12 system was replaced by the decimal system, to leave no trace of that but that linguistic quirk... and maybe the way we divide a day into hours.

A nifty thing about a base of 12 is that its numbers can neatly be divided into halves, thirds, fourths, and sixths. Throw in a desire to fill in the gap there by making your system easy to divide into fifths so that as many basic computations as possible can be done as easily as possible in your head, and you get 60...

[EricDerKonig]

Yes, a base five system could have easily come about. What I don't understand is that the Japanese came up with a base six system. I'd really like to know where that developed from.

Maybe they started with base five, but then wanted to go one better.
"This counting system goes to six."

[Trebuchet]

Just think how much easier it would have been to learn programming if we'd had only eight digits!

[The Supreme Canuck]

Or two! Oh... right...

;)

[yaohua2000]

Unlike in English and many European languages, Chinese language divide numbers in four-digit groups. As a native Chinese speaker, I somtimes feel difficult to read numbers like "1,234,567,890", the separator "," here annoying and can't help me reading. Since in Chinese, the number reads: 12,3456,7890.

[The Supreme Canuck]

Just to make your life even more difficult, in Canada the common practice is to write numbers without a comma. So, in Canada it reads 1234567890. Most of the time. Sometimes it's 1 234 567 890, and sometimes its 1,234,567,890.

Fun, right?

[yaohua2000]

Just to make your life even more difficult, in Canada the common practice is to write numbers without a comma. So, in Canada it reads 1234567890. Most of the time. Sometimes it's 1 234 567 890, and sometimes its 1,234,567,890.

Fun, right?

Spaces are acceptable.

The even worse example is that, however, since Americans do not use SI units regularly, they often write distance like 149597870.691 km as 149.597870691 Gm at Wikipedia. For countries that use SI unit, we only use meter and kilometer regularly, never use gigameter or something like, so it always takes me some seconds to convert these kind of distances. (First convert Gm to meter, second meter to kilometer, then group number in kilometers every 4-digit, and I can finally read it can recognize what the distance to be, much worse than converting between km and miles.)

[The Supreme Canuck]

Wait, people actually use Gm? Fine. From now on, I use rods.

[Celestial Mechanic]

Anyone learning English ultimately ends up learning four sets of number-words:
Cardinals: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ..., n.
Ordinals: First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, ..., n-th.
Prefixes for words derived from Greek: Uni-, di-, tri-, tetra-, penta-, hexa-, hepta-, octa-, ennea-, deca-, ..., poly-.
Prefixes for words derived from Latin: Uni-, bi-, tri-, quad-, quint-, sexa-, septa-, octa-, nona-, deci-, ..., multi-.
I'm sure most Indo-European languages have the same usage. Anybody know about some non-Indo-European languages and their usage? (Suomi, Magyar, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, etc.)

[01101001]

Cardinals: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ...,

Cards: Ace, deuce, trey, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king...

[SMEaton]

Cards: Ace, deuce, trey, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king...Cardinals: Eckstein, Duncan, Pujols, Edmonds, Rolen, Encarcion, Belliard, Molina, Taguchi, Carpenter... that's 10 right?

[SMEaton]

Something like 1*2*3 = 1+2+3 = 2^3 = 6 and the like :). The smiley makes me think that there's a joke I've completely missed. 2^3=.......

[Eroica]

...
Prefixes for words derived from Greek: Uni-, ...

Hen is another Greek prefix for one, as in hendiadys. There's also mono, of course.

[Nicolas]

The smiley makes me think that there's a joke I've completely missed. 2^3=.......

That was a play on a certain group of people known to drag slightly incorrect plays with numbers into their arguments. If you flip 10-11-06...


Maybe they started with base five, but then wanted to go one better.
"This counting system goes to six."


Also known as the Spinal Tap theory :).

As for using space, commas or nothing at all to split large numbers into groups: all fine by me, but I have problems with dot and comma being used both as divider and decimal sign, because it is confusing in things such as 354.628. A factor 1000 can make a difference :).

[The_Radiation_Specialist]

I have drawn some similarities between Western and Arabic numbers.
Note how Arabic numbers 2, 3, 4 and 7 seem to be rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise to become Western numbers. Western 7 looks like Arabic 6.

[Gillianren]

As for using space, commas or nothing at all to split large numbers into groups: all fine by me, but I have problems with dot and comma being used both as divider and decimal sign, because it is confusing in things such as 354.628. A factor 1000 can make a difference :).

That was one of the stumbling blocks I had when I was learning Spanish.

[Nicolas]

There doesn't seem to be any consistency in the use of these two, yet they imply such a vastly different value!

Talking about Western style numbers, may I suggest Apache by the Shadows.

;)

[PhantomWolf]

I have drawn some similarities between Western and Arabic numbers.

When you look at the Hindu Numerals you can see how they changed and evolved to what we use today.

[V-GER]

Anyone learning English ultimately ends up learning four sets of number-words:
Cardinals: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ..., n.
Ordinals: First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, ..., n-th.
Prefixes for words derived from Greek: Uni-, di-, tri-, tetra-, penta-, hexa-, hepta-, octa-, ennea-, deca-, ..., poly-.
Prefixes for words derived from Latin: Uni-, bi-, tri-, quad-, quint-, sexa-, septa-, octa-, nona-, deci-, ..., multi-.
I'm sure most Indo-European languages have the same usage. Anybody know about some non-Indo-European languages and their usage? (Suomi, Magyar, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, etc.)

We have a similar system with Finnish. Greek and Latin based loan words are also used, for instance binary code is binäärikoodi. However, binary star system is kaksoistähtijärjestelmä. So it's just with some words.

[yaohua2000]

Anyone learning English ultimately ends up learning four sets of number-words:
Cardinals: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ..., n.
Ordinals: First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, ..., n-th.
Prefixes for words derived from Greek: Uni-, di-, tri-, tetra-, penta-, hexa-, hepta-, octa-, ennea-, deca-, ..., poly-.
Prefixes for words derived from Latin: Uni-, bi-, tri-, quad-, quint-, sexa-, septa-, octa-, nona-, deci-, ..., multi-.
I'm sure most Indo-European languages have the same usage. Anybody know about some non-Indo-European languages and their usage? (Suomi, Magyar, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, etc.)

In Chinese, Ordinals number = "第" + Cardinals number (no exceptions). For example, "one" is "一", two is "二" in Chinese, and "first" is "第一", second is "第二", and so on.

Chinese language also doesn't have those prefixes, we say "three angle shape" (三角形) for "triangle", "four side shape" for "quadrilateral", "five side shape" for "pentagon", and etc. We also do not say "January", "February", ..., we just say "1 month", "2 month", and etc. We say "2 jinzhi" (二进制) for "binary", "8 jinzhi" for "octal", "10 jinzhi" for "decimal" and "16 jinzhi" for "hexadecimal".

In astronomy, we say "Tu Wei 1" (土卫一, literally "Saturn satellite 1") for "Mimas", "Tu Wei 2" for "Enceladus", "Tu Wei 6" for "Titan", quite easy. :)

[LayMan]

Just think how much easier it would have been to learn programming if we'd had only eight digits!

I believe there's a 64-bit version of Xp out there... We can still beat the Mesopotamians!

All we need to do is convince Celestial Maniac...

[Delvo]

Anyone learning English ultimately ends up learning four sets of number-words:
[list] Cardinals: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, ..., n.
Ordinals: First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, ..., n-th...

Anybody know about some non-Indo-European languages and their usage? (Suomi, Magyar, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Tagalog, etc.)In a linguistics class I took in college, it was presented that some (maybe all, I don't recall) American Indian languages lack the cardinals. So the way to translate "Four days is longer than three days" would equate to "The fourth day is later than the third day", and the way to translate "I ate six strawberries" would equate to "I ate until the sixth strawberry".

[SeanF]

Unlike in English and many European languages, Chinese language divide numbers in four-digit groups. As a native Chinese speaker, I somtimes feel difficult to read numbers like "1,234,567,890", the separator "," here annoying and can't help me reading. Since in Chinese, the number reads: 12,3456,7890.
I didn't know that! :)

I was going to ask about differences in how those numbers are read aloud, but I'm thinking there wouldn't be much difference in Chinese.

In English, it's written 60,000 and pronounced "sixty thousand". 6,0000 would seem to be "six ten-thousand" or something like that (if we had a single word for "ten thousand").

But in Chinese it would be "liu shi qian" regardless of whether it was intended to be "sixty thousand" or "six ten-thousand", wouldn't it?

(FYI, I'm learning Mandarin Chinese, but my instruction is on CDs that are entirely audio-based. In other words, I'm learning to understand the spoken language, but not the written - neither pinyin nor the actual characters - so I hope my pinyin isn't too far off up there).

[yaohua2000]

I didn't know that! :)

I was going to ask about differences in how those numbers are read aloud, but I'm thinking there wouldn't be much difference in Chinese.

In English, it's written 60,000 and pronounced "sixty thousand". 6,0000 would seem to be "six ten-thousand" or something like that (if we had a single word for "ten thousand").

But in Chinese it would be "liu shi qian" regardless of whether it was intended to be "sixty thousand" or "six ten-thousand", wouldn't it?

(FYI, I'm learning Mandarin Chinese, but my instruction is on CDs that are entirely audio-based. In other words, I'm learning to understand the spoken language, but not the written - neither pinyin nor the actual characters - so I hope my pinyin isn't too far off up there).

60000 reads "liu wan", not "liu shi qian". 123456789 reads "1 yi 2 qian 3 bai 4 shi 5 wan 6 qian 7 bai 8 shi 9".

[SeanF]

60000 reads "liu wan", not "liu shi qian". 123456789 reads "1 yi 2 qian 3 bai 4 shi 5 wan 6 qian 7 bai 8 shi 9".
Got it. Chinese does have a single word for "ten thousand" - "wan"

123456789 would be divided as 1,2345,6789.

So the "1 yi" means "one hundred-million" (first section).

The "2 qian 3 bai 4 shi 5 wan" means "one thousand three hundred forty-five ten-thousand" (second section).

And the "6 qian 7 bai 8 shi 9" means "six thousand seven hundred eighty-nine" (last section).

xie xie ni. :)

[Disinfo Agent]

There doesn't seem to be any consistency in the use of these two, yet they imply such a vastly different value!There is consistency within countries, and an international standard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_point#History) (which the US, as usual, disregards :p ;)).

[Celestial Mechanic]

I believe there's a 64-bit version of Xp out there... We can still beat the Mesopotamians! All we need to do is convince Celestial Maniac...
:lol:

Make that a 64-bit version of OS/2 and you've got a deal! ;)

[Demigrog]

Just think how much easier it would have been to learn programming if we'd had only eight digits!

Heh, programming on 12-bit processors used to be done in octal fairly regularly.

[01101001]

Got it. Chinese does have a single word for "ten thousand" - "wan"

So do we: myriad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myriad).

We don't use it that way so much any more.

[Eroica]

Cards: Ace, deuce, trey, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king...

Sheep (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Tan_Tethera): Yan, Tan, Tethera, Methera, Pip, Sethera, Lethera, Hovera, Dovera, Dick ....
:)

[mickal555]

Thanks for the info, SeanF.

Oddly, while I was examining the picture I thought of BAUT's 01101001 as well as a binary nightmare Bender had which had a '2' show up.

Don't be silly there is no such thing as a two