From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Aug 19 07:53:24 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Fri, 19 Aug 2005 10:24:43 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.52) id 1E68FI-0000nI-6W for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:53:24 -0700 Received: from wproxy.gmail.com ([64.233.184.207]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1E68FF-0000n3-1U for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:53:24 -0700 Received: by wproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id i30so562133wra for ; Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:53:19 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=IVboAIO4e3xMZicQBa14VePpLYrCEap1PiYGWG6j1nKQM3pAQEDpH3Y5VuPufpItqpIBHfXlArnKWi15O/zN4oCBjCvcuWjtGiZOOnd07oIFsQ1Xx+yeTx3L8BZvmpCH5iIsRMFWdxqIGBOE++1keiCxdHf5GonQ8quEC4hTu14= Received: by 10.54.36.8 with SMTP id j8mr1901547wrj; Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:53:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.54.140.6 with HTTP; Fri, 19 Aug 2005 07:53:18 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 10:53:18 -0400 From: Matt Arnold To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Why 16 In-Reply-To: <2d3df92a050819014471077557@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis Content-Disposition: inline References: <2d3df92a050819014471077557@mail.gmail.com> X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) X-archive-position: 1790 X-Approved-By: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: matt.mattarn@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners coi .xiliodor. The best reason to have these words is that they are useful. A better question is, why not have them? By my count, I see 31 number digit words, if I understand them correctly: 0 no 1 pa 2 re 3 ci 4 vo 5 mu 6 xa 7 ze 8 bi 9 so each ro many so'i several so'o all of piro few so'u how many? xo most so'e almost all so'a too many du'e too few mo'a enough rau typical value no'o infinity ci'i pi pai hex digit A dau hex digit B fei hex digit C gai hex digit D jau hex digit E rei hex digit F vai imaginary i (square root of -1) ka'o I also see several quantity modifier words: greater than za'u less than me'i at least su'o at most su'e approximately ji'i all except da'a -epkat On 8/19/05, HeliodoR wrote: > I'm also curious about the creators' decision on the number system: why do > we have 2^4 basic number-words? > (And I will hardly accept an answer like 'Because that covers 10' since, for > example, 1000 is also perfect for this reason. :) ) > > heliodor > > P.S.: Maybe they liked the symmetry of 2^2^2??