tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 08 14:45:02 1998
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Re: Question from a newbie
- From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Question from a newbie
- Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 15:46:36 -0400
From: Terrence Donnelly <[email protected]>
>MO says in TKD "Klingon originally had a ternary number system; that is,
>one based on three. Counting proceeded as follows: 1, 2, 3, 3+1, 3+2, 3+3;
>2x3+1, 2x3+2, 2x3+3; 3x3+1; 3x3+2; 3x3+3; and then it got complicated." 8+)
>
>I can't imagine how Klingons actually formed the number words, but
>presumably they
>were based on the basic {wa', cha', wej}. If they used numerals at all,
they
>would
>not have been things like 1,2,3,11,12, etc., because that only makes sense
>in place-
>holder notation. More likely, each numerical value would have had its own
>symbol.
Quite right. The original Klingon counting system has always interested me.
Not because it's ternary, but because of that "and then it got complicated"
line. We have absolutely no way to know what comes after "three threes plus
three."
>I can see that zero isn't needed for simple counting, but I can't see any
>culture doing higher math without it. This is probably why the Klingons
>switched to the base-10 system; I'd expect the sero was adopted then.
Precisely. {pagh} may very well have meant "nothing, nobody," but not have
been used in counting at all. When base-10 was adopted, they borrowed the
fourth through eighth tone names as number names. I can't even speculate on
the origin of {Hut}.
SuStel
Stardate 98515.6