[lojban] Re: round numbers

[Pierre Abbat <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On Friday 13 October 2006 15:34, Jorge Llambías wrote:
> It seems to me that {cukla namcu} is the best choice.
> Even though these numbers are not round in the same way that
> wheels are round, "round" is not just accidental homonymy here.
> (I suppose the metaphor is something like the numbers are filled
> out or their edges softened so that they become simpler.)
> What are round numbers called in Chinese, or in Swahili, or in
> Quechua, for example? If they all use the same word they use
> for wheels, then it would seem Lojban should do that too. If not,
> then there might be an argument for having a specialized term in
> Lojban.

I looked up "round number" on Wikipedia. There's one interlanguage link, to 
Russian "круглые числа". "Вокруг" means "around" so that's no different. I 
went to "rounding" and found links to many Indo-European languages, all 
having some resemblance to "rotund" or "krug", Chinese and Korean which I 
can't read, and Hebrew "עיגול (פעולה)". "עיגול" redirects to "מעגל" which 
means "circle". ("עגל" means "calf"; I tried that first and found an article 
about the golden calf. Calves probably have no more to do with circles than 
plagues with words.)

So we have two unrelated languages in which the word for "round number" is 
related to a word for "circle" or the like. But much mathematics was 
developed by Arabic speakers, and Arabic is related to Hebrew, so a loan 
translation is likely. Anyone here know what round numbers are called in a 
language with an independent mathematical tradition?

I think that's enough evidence to define {cukna'u}.

Pierre


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