12-17-2014, 07:39 AM | #841 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
|
Re: Real-Life Weirdness
Japanese numbers are easy enough to start with- knowing 1-10 gets you up to 99 by appropriate combinations.
But then they have a 10^4 system for generating large numbers, rather than English's 10^3. To explain: 10 - ju 100 - hyaku 1000 - sen 1,0000 - man These combine to make larger numbers until you get to: 1,0000,0000 - oku 1,0000,0000,0000 - cho ... and so on. Once you get the hang of it, this is easy enough to handle, as long as you continue to think in Japanese. The problem is when you try to translate back to English numbers, and doubly so when converting yen to dollars (at 100:1). I have to stop and think in index numbers before I can figure out the English. Then there's counting. They use different number suffixes for different kinds of objects- generic things (-tsu or -ko), flat things (-mai), thin things (-hon), books (-satsu), people (-ri/-nin), animals (-hiki), birds (-wa) and so on. And the number prefixes are either from Japanese roots or Chinese roots or a mixture, just depending. Frequency and floors in a building are identical (-kai), except for 3, when 3 times is "sankai" but 3rd floor is "sangai". You could compare it to English's fascination with collective nouns (pride, herd, pack, gang) except it's far more integral to language use and comprehension.
__________________
Collaborative Settings: Cyberpunk: Duopoly Nation Space Opera: Behind the King's Eclipse And heaps of forum collabs, 30+ and counting! |
12-17-2014, 08:08 AM | #842 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
|
Re: Real-Life Weirdness
Then there are the unusual Medieval Roman numerals. Some of the letters stand for the oddest numbers (e.g. 6, 7, 11, 151).
Hans |
12-19-2014, 09:39 AM | #843 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
|
Re: Real-Life Weirdness
Quote:
--- More world weirdness- A million corpse cemetary from 7th century Egypt Another interesting find was that the corpses appeared to be grouped together by hair colour, with one section containing the remains of those with blonde hair and another for those with red hair.
__________________
Collaborative Settings: Cyberpunk: Duopoly Nation Space Opera: Behind the King's Eclipse And heaps of forum collabs, 30+ and counting! |
|
12-19-2014, 10:17 AM | #844 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
|
Re: Real-Life Weirdness
Quote:
The story behind the Towers of Hanoi is most likely apocryphal, but if somehow not not, those monks needed the number 2^64 - 1. |
|
12-19-2014, 03:25 PM | #845 |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
|
Re: Real-Life Weirdness
English has googol and googolplex, but those are silly completely useless numbers.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check. |
01-08-2015, 03:17 PM | #846 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
|
Re: Real-Life Weirdness
__________________
“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...” Marcus Aurelius |
01-13-2015, 09:49 PM | #847 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Beaverton, OR
|
Re: Real-Life Weirdness
Pendleton Ward (creator of Adventure Time) and Pat McHale (creator of the creepy/whimsical mini-series Over the Garden Wall) collaborated on an RPG (possibly a LARP) in 2006: http://www.angelfire.com/punk/lifequest/
Why am I not surprised? It is so cool seeing kids who grew up as gamers being given the reins of television shows that become hits.
__________________
Alphabet Arcane / MacGuffin Alphabet / Unnight Twitter: StefanEJones |
01-13-2015, 11:16 PM | #848 | |
Computer Scientist
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
|
Re: Real-Life Weirdness
Quote:
|
|
01-14-2015, 01:13 AM | #849 |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
|
Re: Real-Life Weirdness
Such a common "real" English word that a basic Google search showed a whole 6 results.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check. |
01-21-2015, 01:26 PM | #850 |
Join Date: Sep 2008
|
Re: Real-Life Weirdness
X-ray technique reads burnt Vesuvius scroll
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30888767 Because as any CoC player can tell you, "Sure this is a good idea!" |
Tags |
blueberry muffin, fermi paradox |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|