Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: tired

Seshaa Bases

I had known for some time that Seshaa had different words for "ten" in different mathematical bases. I foolishly decided to pursue this. I say "foolishly" because my desertfolk are all math mavens, and I am not. Important safety tip for xenolinguistics: just because you don't understand something does not mean that your characters will not try earnestly to explain it to you. At length. Stuffing your head with vocabulary in a manner that resembles trying to cram a 36" couch through a 32" door.


Some base vocabulary:

ar (adjective) – In Whispering Sands use, means “ten.” This is the most general term and refers to base 10. Other bases have their own unique words for “ten” and each word applies only to that base: ark (“base-2 ten”), art (“base-3 ten”), arch (“base-4 ten”), arj (“base-5 ten”), arsh (“base-6 ten”), arp (“base-7 ten”), arb (“base-8 ten”), ard (“base-9 ten”), arha (“base-11 ten”), artu (“base-12 ten”), arint ("base-13 ten"), arin (“base-16 ten”), ardi (“base-20 ten”), and aref (“base-60 ten”).

ghade (noun) – In Whispering Sands use, means “base,” “mathematical base,” or “radix.” The term ghade yokli means “imaginary base,” that is, one based on an imaginary number. The term ghade aaman means “impeccable base,” “Golden Ratio base,” or “phinary.” The term ghade keeshil means “mixed base.”

ghadeneh (noun) – In Whispering Sands use, means “negative base.”


Some other math vocabulary that came along for the ride:

balar (noun, adjective or adverb) – In WhisperingSands use, means “logarithm” or “logarithmic scale.” It can also mean “rapidly changing” or“climbing fast,” which logarithmic numbers do.

chegi (noun) – In Whispering Sands use, means “sunflower.”

chegikoy (noun) – In Whispering Sands use, means “a sunflower-pack” or “Fibonacci sequence,” that is, a set of something following the Fibonacci sequence of numbers.

shiresh (noun, adjective or adverb) – In WhisperingSands use, means “exponential” or “exponential function.” This can also refer to the shape of a curvethat mimics the exponential line.


And I finally know why my desertfolk crack up when Star Wars comes on:

deetu (noun, adjective or adverb) – In Whispering Sands use, means “chatter,” “gossip,” or “small talk.” The phrase artu deetu means “base-12 chatter,” or more colloqiually, “math talk” or “number game,” because base 12 is popular for use in games.


No wonder they didn't want to try explaining that to me earlier...
Tags: fantasy, linguistics, seshaa
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  • 8 comments

Interesting

Anonymous

February 26 2008, 16:13:43 UTC 13 years ago

Why do your desertfolk need so much math? In history, most cultural groups stuck with base 10, or sometimes base 5 to come up wtih their number systems. I don't think anyone ever uses things like base 13 or 7 except as an academic exercise.

Or at least, that's what I've heard. If I'm wrong, feel free to point it out.
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Interesting

ysabetwordsmith

February 26 2008, 19:04:39 UTC 13 years ago

One reason they do a lot of math is because it feels good to them. Solving a math puzzle or learning a new term or technique sparks the reward center in the brain, similar to the feeling of "getting" the punchline of a joke.

As I explained in another reply, they also use math in art, architecture, games, and magic. Then too, most of the terrain is fairly hostile to life. If you want to survive, you had better know exactly how much you have in the way of supplies and how many people/animals that will support. Math is handy for navigation in the high desert too, where the dunes tend to provide little in the way of landmarks.

Some ancient cultures did favor other bases: the Sumerians liked base 12 and base 60, and the Mayans used base 20. Some bases, like those, and the ones used in modern computing, do useful things. Others are mainly just for fun.
dianavilliers

Re: Interesting

dianavilliers

February 26 2008, 20:00:07 UTC 13 years ago

Even in our own culture, we can still buy things by the dozen or the gross, and no one's decimalized the clocks yet. Those who still engineer in imperial units divide the inch either in decimal subunits or binary... We don't have to go fishing in ancient cultures for examples.

Thinking about this, I am surprised not that your friends have different words for the bases, but that the words are so similar.

Re: Interesting

Anonymous

February 26 2008, 23:31:51 UTC 13 years ago

Speaking as an engineer, I would like to state for the record that I despise english units. When I absolutely have to use them, what I usually end up doing is translating the initial, english units into metric, using the metric units to get the answer, and then translate the final answer back into english for the report or assignment. English units are okay for everyday things like measuring gallons of gasoline or miles per hour, but they are absolutely terrible for doing serious science.
dianavilliers

Re: Interesting

dianavilliers

February 27 2008, 00:21:56 UTC 13 years ago

Speaking as a New Zealander and a physicist*, I regard them as an interesting historical curiosity, and buy petrol by the litre. There are people out there who have jobs or hobbies maintaining and re-creating machinery originally designed in imperial units - I was referring to them. I would expect a modern engineer to work in metric.

*I am used to being a non-representative sample and generally make allowance.
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Interesting

ysabetwordsmith

February 27 2008, 04:22:16 UTC 13 years ago

They're good for different things. As you say, metric is convenient for science. I prefer English for cooking because the amounts are typical of what's useful in a recipe. Metric units are so damn small, you have to use a lot to get anywhere, and then it's a nuisance to remember the bigger numbers. Same with measuring, say, the height of a person; feet make more sense to me than meters or centimeters. The English system is more inspired by sizes relevant to a human body; the metric system is more convenient when there's lots of math involved, because it's all consistent based on decimal format.
dianavilliers

Re: Interesting

dianavilliers

February 27 2008, 05:17:22 UTC 13 years ago Edited:  February 27 2008, 05:17:42 UTC

I disagree - I think that it's very much a matter of what you've been brought up with.
I bake in metric. I have no mental construct of what an ounce is, but I can accurately estimate weights in hundreds of grams. I think of a pound as being about 1/2 a kg. There are four cups in a litre. An egg, thankfully, remains an egg.

I have also built telescopes in peculiar mixtures of both metric and imperial. Focal lengths get metres as plywood is sold in metric, diameters get inches, as telescope-making literature is largely from the US, and telescope basic specs are diameter and focal ratio.

Has this thread drifted too far yet?
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Interesting

ysabetwordsmith

February 27 2008, 04:36:07 UTC 13 years ago

Sometimes there are sets of words that are similar, other times the parts of a set seem to have no relation to each other.