#ethnomathematics — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #ethnomathematics, aggregated by home.social.
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Some #linguistics / #ethnomathematics
In most Eurasian languages, the numbers from 21 to 99 folllow the general pattern "X tens [and] Y".
In Finnish: 42 = neljä·kymmentä·kaksi 'four tens two'
However, in Finnic and Sámi languages (and probably in other Uralic languages as well), there used to be another system that used ordinals for the tens (and sometimes even for the hundreds):
42 = kaksi·viidettä[kymmentä] 'two of the fifth [ten]'
This approach would make it possible to have an unambiguous place-value number system without a zero symbol:
III I II III
'three of the first ten of the second hundred of the third thousand'
= 2103 -
Some #linguistics / #ethnomathematics
In most Eurasian languages, the numbers from 21 to 99 folllow the general pattern "X tens [and] Y".
In Finnish: 42 = neljä·kymmentä·kaksi 'four tens two'
However, in Finnic and Sámi languages (and probably in other Uralic languages as well), there used to be another system that used ordinals for the tens (and sometimes even for the hundreds):
42 = kaksi·viidettä[kymmentä] 'two of the fifth [ten]'
This approach would make it possible to have an unambiguous place-value number system without a zero symbol:
III I II III
'three of the first ten of the second hundred of the third thousand'
= 2103 -
This article mentions the concept of #ethnoprogramming in the context of non-English-based #esolangs. I'm surprised that I hadn't heard this word before (I've been fascinated by #ethnomathematics and #ethnocomputing for many many years).
A few years ago I tried to find mainstreamish programming languages that would allow Turing-complete programming without the use of any English words (or by extension, words from any specific natural language). Julia was the only one I could find. Haskell, Clean, Prolog and/or Elixir might be able to pass the test as well.
Programming Language Design as Art