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Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

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Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#71
post #67
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Note that 'soixante dix' is 6A, not 70. "Soixante-dix" would be 70 no matter how you look at it, and 0x6A is obviously "cent six". That's why you need a new suffix as well as new names for exponentials instead of trying to retrofit existing number-naming convention. (Same thing is true for English as well) So let this new hexadecimal suffix would be -anze, 16 ^ 3 is hexmille, 16 ^ 2 is hexcents, 0xB78D = 46989 woul…

I think you’re missing the point. Soixante-dix becomes 6A, since 6x is « soixante » and A is « dix » Then, 7x becomes septante. For example, 7A becomes septante-dix

Sure, except that in standard (metropolitan) French, "soixante-dix" is already used for 70.

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#72
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Que? "Fifty" is "five-tens", numerically, semantically, and etymologically.

It's no where near as clear as the chinese version which is literally five tens though. To know fifty is 50 and five tens you have to already know both the meaning of number places and what fifty means, really hard to derive from just the name or seeing 50 written out.

Well, I'm not a native speaker. All I can say is it was crystal clear to me when I began learning English at age ten.

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#73
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this system, but how do you deal with the ambiguity around "ten"? 9: nine A: ten? B: eleven ... 10: ten? 20: twenty 30: thirty

A=ten, 10=onety, 11=onety-one, 1A=onety-ten, etc ? Edit: Or as suggested in the original link, A=Ten, 10=annty, 11=annty-one and 1A=annty-ten

[deleted]

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#75

The extra digit names flow well, but I think shoehorning it into the same constructions English decimal numbers use doesn't, mostly because the “-ty”/“-teen” suffixes are too tied both etymologically and phonetically to being “ten”. If I say the word “eighteen”, making it 0x18 in one context and XVIII in another is close in plausible applicability and far in exact meaning, which is about the worst case for avoiding m…

I endorse that warning, I try to never pronounce i.e. 0x10 as "ten", just "hex one zero". After I wasted an hour hunting down somewhere I misused a number having the wrong base, it just isn't worth it.

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#76

I totally fail the point of this article. Why not just say A, B, C, D, E, F as the letters that they are? Works perfectly fine. 1F is just a two-syllable word. Just like "fiftysix" is.

Because there is a shed that needs to be biked.

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see no reason this couldn't be applied to English. "-nz(e)", etc. is akin to "-teen", and beyond that it should be exactly the same, with septante/seventy, huitante/eighty, and nonante/ninety being the popular English versions (unlike e.g. Metropolitan French). B78D: Eleven Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty Thirteen See also Tolkien's famous hobbit's birthday party.

Pronounce 11,78D vs B78D.

As suggested in a cousin: onety-one thousand, seven hundred and eighty thirteen.

Every word (phrase in the case of hundred/thousand) becomes strictly one digit, as opposed to normal English where e.g. "thirteen" is actually two digits.

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#78

Didn't Malcolm Gladwell talk about how the Chinese names for numbers were were closer to their place values and therefore less confusing for calculations? e.g. "50" is "five-tens" instead of "fifty"

Que? "Fifty" is "five-tens", numerically, semantically, and etymologically.

Now that you've written it out I can tell that the "-ty" of "fifty" was probably shortened from some older pronunciation more resembling the word "ten". But I guarantee you that native English speakers are not thinking this in large numbers. This is the sort of insight that comes better when it's not your native language, others of us will just internalize "fifty" as its own word.

I guess it's also no coincidence that words ending in -teen are frequently confused with and misheard for those ending in -ty.

Edit: Seems like they derive from different Germanic roots for 10.

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#79

Much less interesting but I've worked in teams where "zillion" is a shorthand for "followed by all the zeroes that fit in a word of the size we're talking about". So 8 zillion is 0x80000000 if we're talking about a 32 bit address space.

In that case, you could pronounce the :: in IPv6 addresses ("fill with zeroes") as "zillion" if it appears at the end of the address!

(I don't know how people pronounce that operator otherwise... I just say "colon colon".)

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#80

I totally fail the point of this article. Why not just say A, B, C, D, E, F as the letters that they are? Works perfectly fine. 1F is just a two-syllable word. Just like "fiftysix" is.

Simply because people love bikeshedding naming conventions. At this point, naming is just an engineering meme.
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