[lojban-beginners] Re: numbers

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Tuesday 10 February 2009 06:45:35 Roman Salmin wrote:
>   Hi all,
>
>  Let me introduce myself first. My name is Roman Salmin I live in Russia my
> profession is physicist and I have interest in programming languages also.
>  I began to study lojban for my own amusement and in hope for "better
> world" recently. Now I am only at chapter 5 in "Lojban for beginners".
>
> Now is a question: Is it correct to say something like "li feidau" for
> number 120? (11*10 + 10) in decimal numeration?

No. It's grammatically correct, as are such phrases as "pa pi pai ra'e ro", 
but isn't a proper number unless the base is at least 12. It's 
like "eleventy-seven" or "capítulo diecisiete, versículo diecionce" (the 
latter is my mishearing of a Bible citation which is actually two verses, 10 
and 11).

Can you figure out what number "cira'epi" is? It is valid, but in a kind of 
mathematics you may not know about.

Pierre