Tom: We tend to think that numbers are a universal language like if there was a extraterrestrial single the hit Earth, that
it would start with one plus one is two and it would work up from there and work
from there and work up from there and then eventually we're building a machine opens a wormhole to Vega. And that's a really good idea for formal mathematics and formal logic
it might work... but the way that humans actually use
numbers and we talk to each other it is not nearly as universal as you might think I mean I should say I'm a linguist not a
mathematician. I've kind of moved over to numberphile briefly here but to my background's
linguistics and the number of ways that humans use numbers... The number of ways
that humans use numbers? Doesn't even make sense... And you might say okay this there's some weird
examples where English is base 10, but it's not
entirely because we still have dozen which is based 12, we still have Gross,
which is 12 times 12, which is 144 that's all base 12 that's duo-decimal
we still have 'score' in the language in the language, we still have 'four score and
seven years ago' with Abraham Lincoln he meant eighty-seven but 'four score and seven' resonates because we used to have base 20 counting. We used to have vigesimal, and that still resonates well in the language today. We still have all of that. I looked up specifically one linguist
called Glendon Lean who spent twenty years touring round Papua New
Guinea, Oceania, all kind of south eastern areas he found languages that were base 6. He found languages that were base 15. He found all sorts of outliers that you would find if you have isolated populations on isolated islands. They're not that weird though. I mean you've done a
French video before right you have 'quatre vingt sept' which is
four 20s & seven. That's strange before you even get outside Europe. Hindi is so
irregular that for the numbers 1 to 100 you
essentially have a hundred different words. There is a pattern in there behind them
but the forms are so irregular and they change so much that you basically have to learn a hundred
different words. Danish ... Danish is an astonishing one the Danish number for 58 is I'm totally not going to pronounce this
correctly 'otteoghalvtreds' I think I apologize
to the people of Denmark 'otte' is eight, that's easy, I think the 'o' is in there as well ignore the 'g', that's just to link things together, and then you've got this, which is 'halvtreds' -- 'half third' now hang on, that's meant to mean 'fifty'
so what's going on there? so dot is the freebie action that so that is an abbreviation, it's 'halvtredsindstyve' again I'm sorry but that is 'half thrice times 20' which still doesn't make any sense
because how can you manage, half times three times ... how does that make fifty? well then you get another catch because this
bit here 'half thrice' is like Roman numerals what you got there is 'half away from thrice'
this literally means 3 minus 1/2 times 20 which if you actually do the maths is
two-and-a-half times twenty which is 50 so you finally have 58 you have half thrice two-and-a-half times twenty plus eight,
58 so the complete opposite end of the scale is Tonga.
Which is wonderful there there are a few more formal
ways you can say them but essentially if you're saying a really complex number like 771,216 you say the numbers for 7 7 1 2 1 6 in order that's it. It is as simple as
that you just say the numbers for one thing I suspect most of your viewers will think
is that at least we've agreed on Arabic numerals now. At least we've
we've got the standard 5, 6, 7, 8 standard 0 to 9 that everyone uses. Ehm, Not Quite someone languages, particularly those in India and China still use their own numeral system particularly for formal things
like we still use Roman numerals for clock faces they might use them in similar places
Brady: And the SuperBowl Tom: And the SuperBowl! Of course, yes.
although SuperBowl 50 is going to be SuperBowl 50 (five zero)
because Super Bowl L doesn't really sound all that impressive.
There's a few other obvious points mainland Europe uses a comma for the decimal point and a
full stop to separate thousands
UK and US are the other way around If you're using currency then there are a whole
load a different ways to say 'and no cents' you might put a slash. You might put a comma and a slash, you might put dot double '0'. And then there's the big one 'cos
I said thousands separator a while ago and
that's not universal either and I really got surprised by this when I looked it up there is not a universal thing for how
many digits should be in each group if you go to
South Asia to India to Pakistan to areas around there you will find they don't use, I mean they
do, they can use that as well but frequently the system that is used is the 'crore' and the 'lakh' watch a British guy try and explain
'crore' and 'lakh' your lack is 10^5 and your crore is 10^7,
and here's the thing they are written like this your least significant group is three
digits and each group that's more significant than
that is two so you can have a lakh crore,
which is going to be 10^12 and watch me mess this up that's 5, that's 7, that's 9, that's 11
which is going to be written like that that's a trillion and there's no reason why that should be a trillion instead of a lakh crore its just what we happen to decide you might be able to argue that constant threes is maybe a bit more understandable but
that's coming from a really English perspective. I would be absolutely certain
that someone who grew up with this system would have just as good a reason why
theirs is more logical let's say all written spoken language
fails, let's say you have someone who you have about absolutely nothing in
common with at all at least you can gesture. At least you can say, you
know, 8, 9 these are ... no ... no. I even thought that was universal until someone I know came back from China and told me that if you are going to
be in certain regions in China you are going to be using hand gestures
that are complete different so you get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 I'm gonna try this, and I know someone in the comments is gonna call me out for hand positions being a little wrong, but it is roughly 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 or sometimes 10 are which are based on the shapes of the original Chinese
characters for those numbers that kinda blew me away but then I found the paper from Glendon Lean I mentioned right at
the start about Papua New Guinea and languages in that area
who use a brilliant thing called a body count tally system so they will go 1, 2, 3,4 5, 6 7, 8, 9, 10 and then depending on which language
it will follow different points around the face of it might go across and down the other side okay there are a lot differences between
languages but the majority who use that system? base 27 because you have 27 points that
that they refer to to keep tally. We're not going to be
doing advanced calculus in this we're going to be you know during
everyday conversations but that means you can do things like one man and here. 37. you can start keeping tally with things and
that's wonderful because that is something but I hadn't even thought of. I haven't even come up with
before reading about it that wasn't something that my my mind was open to.
What I wanted to do here, kind of a grand finale, was to look at what science fiction
writers have done with alien languages but they're nowhere even close to that. I
looked up Klingon, from Star Trek
Klingon on is base 10 with words for thousands and millions it's clearly written by an English
speaker and it's more English and more normal for us for those with over here than half the languages i've talked about! And it's meant to be an alien species and I know in Star Trek they're all meant to have come from
a common ancestor but we did come from a common ancestor and
we've got much much weirder numbers in our own human speech than science fiction has ever come up with. I think that's one of the best things about linguistics, about
being human, about all of this is that someone on the
other side the world something that they will consider
absolutely normal can completely blow your mind Brady: We'd like to thank Squarespace for
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that needs a web presence check them out. You can even give it a trial
run, set up a site, see what you think, with no credit card required and then if you do sign on for a year
they'll throw in a free domain name use the offer code numberphile
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Når jeg er er i Danmark pleier jeg bare å gi mannen som selger meg noe alle pengene mine og så takker og bukker jeg for de jeg får tilbake.
Tom Scott er nice. Han er virkelig værd at følge på YouTube.
Problemet er at folk ofte tror, at vi tænker på den måde, når vi siger tallene, men i praksis associerer vi jo bare "halvtreds" direkte med "50". Det samme gør man jo også i Frankrig og andre lande, hvor talsystemerne er relativt komplicerede. Det er jo ikke sådan at vi rent faktisk sidder og laver hovedregning, hver gang vi læser et tocifret tal højt.
Jeg elsker det danske talsystem. Fantastisk komplekst, fordi vi er så meget klogere end de dumme svenskere som har et talsystem for små børn. Giv mig til enhver tid vores frankofile sensesystem.
Nu er det så linket en del gange over årene, men det er jo ikke bare 58, og det er ligegyldigt om det er 8 eller noget andet til sidst.
Det er meget simpelt, vi har lavet ordene til alle de her tal (50, 60, 70, 80 og 90) baseret på en formel.
Halvtredsindstyve. Halv tre, halvejs til tre, så 2,5, samme princip som når vi tæller tiden. Sind er det originale danske ord for at gange, også tyve.
Så 2,5 * 20, præcis som han siger.
Og det samme gør sig gældene længere oppe.
Tresindstyve (60): 3*20
Halvfjerdsindstyve (70): 3,5*20
Firsindstyve (80): 4*20
og Halvfemsindstyve (90) 4,5*20
Også har vi jo blot forkortet dem, så det dermed blot er et ord. Vi behøver jo ikke tænke på det som en formel, det handler kun om oprindelsen.
TeamFemtiOtte
RemindMe! 16 hours
Jeg skal bare se den her imorgen.
Undskyld mig, men har jeg lært noget helt forkert? Det, som bliver gennemgået her i videoen er blot den halve sandhed. Så:
Grunden til, at vi i Danmark bruger "halvtreds", "halvfjerds" osv. er ikke, at det er halvejen til den tredje eller halvvejen til den fjerde. Vores talsystem er bygget op over de gamle måder at tælle mængder på, nærmere dusin, snes, skok, ol og gros. Når vi siger "halvtreds", betyder det i realiteten halvdelen af den tredje snes.
1 snes = 20
3 snese = 60
halvdelen af den tredje snes (og de to første implicit inkluderet) = 50.
Var bare lige nødt til at få det ud. Dette gør blot vores talsystem endnu mere komplekst at forstå, men dette kun til det bedre. Ses svensken.
TIL