tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 24 13:49:42 2000
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: lengwI' vIyaj vIneH
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: lengwI' vIyaj vIneH
- Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2000 16:49:16 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
- Priority: NORMAL
On Tue, 22 Feb 2000 18:10:00 -0800 Qov <[email protected]>
wrote:
> > wot chenmoHmeH tu'lu' wa'netlh'uy' vaghSaD'uy' vaghvatlh'uy'
> > SochmaH'uy' wej'uy' wa'bIp Sochnetlh wejSaD javvatlh wa'maH jav patmey pIm
> > 'e' vInoH!
>
> Have another look at the word order there. Think OVS.
>
> > 15,573,173,616.
>
> Daj. I'd never seen anyone write a number that large in Klingon,
You obviously forget pagh's expression of pi out to more
than 50 digits. From memory.
> and at
> first I thought there was something wrong. Now I really like it. Easier
> to parse than English numbers. (cha'ben, DIvI' Hol mI'mey mu'mey pojmeH
> De'wI' vIghun 'ej ghommey polmeH loSnIS De'wI'. tlhIngan Hol mI'mey
> yajmeH, SIbI' yajlu'. Daj).
I suspect this person is European, since that's the way
Europeans express orders of magnetude higher than a hundred
million. What Americans call a billion, they call a
thousand million. It is a very efficient form of expressing
numbers, since their billion is our trillion and their
thousand billion is our quadrillion, and their million
billion is that order of magnitude that I don't know the
word for in American English. But in European terminology,
I know a million billion, a trillion, a thousand trillion,
a million trillion, a billion trillion, a quadrillion, a
thousand quadrillion, a million quadrillion, a billion
quadrillion and a trillion quadrillion all before I run out
of numbers that I know words for.
Meanwhile, in Klingon, is wa'netlh'uy' a valid number term?
I actually hope so, but we don't have any real evidence for
it. Unless we get some word from Okrand, we need to realize
that on those rare events when we have to express a number
bigger than nine million nine hundred ninety nine thousand
nine hundred and ninety nine, we are no longer speaking
Klingon as we know it is spoken, unless we merely list off
the digits without indicating order of magnetude.
I'll also add that the calculated number above probably
ignores meaningless combinations of suffixes, which do
exist.
charghwI'