[lojban-beginners] Re: explicit time and space

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

On Thursday 06 July 2006 07:50, djim.dyBEL. wrote:
> On Thursday 06 July 2006 12:22, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> > Dates are said in the order YYYY-MM-DD when said as a number.
>
> Is this a recent change?  Lojban for Beginners seems to say it's the other
> way around, and the errata on the wiki doesn't list this as a mistake.
>
> http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/lessons/less5dates.html

{pi'e} is used to separate digits in bases greater than 16 and to separate 
numbers in a compound number, which can be any of various things, such as:
a map book and page number: vovopi'ecixapa, 44-361;
a continued fraction, in which the components sort alternately up and down;
a time, which is actually a base 60 number;
a chapter and verse in the Bible.
In all of these, the most significant number comes first. It makes no sense to 
do it the other way around with dates.

phma