From a.rosta@ntlworld.com Sat Nov 10 15:48:11 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@ntlworld.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 10 Nov 2001 23:48:11 -0000 Received: (qmail 25759 invoked from network); 10 Nov 2001 23:48:11 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.171) by m5.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 10 Nov 2001 23:48:11 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta02-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.42) by mta3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 10 Nov 2001 23:48:11 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.255.40.125]) by mta02-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.00 201-229-121) with SMTP id <20011110234719.FZM4462.mta02-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Sat, 10 Nov 2001 23:47:19 +0000 To: Subject: RE: bases [was: Re: [lojban] Re:HEX advert... (Don't know what it was) Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2001 23:46:37 -0000 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <9sjfeg+c77v@eGroups.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin Bloke Without A Favourite Colour: > --- In lojban@y..., And Rosta wrote: > > I could point out, btw, that by your reasoning it could be argued > that > > English is default base 13, given that digits 1-12 are > noncompositional. > > Just because English has the words 'ten', 'eleven', and 'twelve' are > not respectively 'onety', 'oneteen', and 'twoteen' does not mean > English uses base 13 by any stretch, any more than 'thirteen' not > being 'threeteen', 'fifteen' not being 'fiveteen', or 'twenty' not > being 'twoty' means anything about the base English uses. All these > are plainly irregularities. And, similarly, just because Lojban has noncompositional words for zero through to 15 does not mean Lojban by default uses base 16. > > (BTW, I favour duodecimal for cardinal numbers & sexagesimal for > > fractions.) > > But why? Convenience of division; it's useful to be able to divide things into 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 etc neatly & tidily. 60 for fractions because it is divisible by 5 but not for cardinal numbers because its too large to do multiplication with. --And.