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Counting in the wrong language

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Re: Counting in the wrong language

#91

Post by nkurz »

Depending on what you are counting, sometimes "wrong" can be historically "right":

In Swaledale, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, sheep farmers used to, and some still do; count their sheep in a very curious fashion. Instead of One, Two, Three, Four... they go, thus: (1)Yan, (2)Tan, (3)Tether, (4)Mether, (5)Pip; (6)Ezar, (7)Sezar, (8)Acker, (9)Conter, (10)Dick; (11)Yan-a-Dick, (12)Tan-a-Dick, (13)Tether-a-Dick, (14)Mether-a-Dick, (15)Bumfit; (16)Yan-a-Bum, (17)Tan-a-Bum, (18)Tether-a-Bum, (19)Mether-a-Bum, (20)Jigget. Having reached Twenty, they then take a stone [or make a mark upon the ground or a piece of wood, thus the term 'a score' or 'twenty'] representing the Twenty sheep that they have counted; and if they possess more than Twenty sheep, they go for another twenty:

Yan, Tan, Tether, Mether, Pip... Another Twenty, another stone. Yan, Tan, Tether, Mether, Pip... Again,Twenty, again another stone.

Jake Thackray 'Molly Metcalfe' 1971

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiXINuf5nbI

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#92

Post by cyrilfiggis »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #67
Razengan wrote: post #30

This brings up a point that has always eerily intrigued me: Can you even count at all -without- a language? Visually, you might be able to do it; e.g. seeing a clump of 5 trees and knowing it’s 5 without having to “say” “five” in your head. But try tapping on the desk or clapping your hands and counting how many times you did it without saying/thinking “1, 2, 3, 4...” I wonder if associating a transient stream of inp…

I have read about what may or may not be a hypothetical example of a shepherd who "counts" his flock by matching sheep passing through a gate with stones put into or taken out of a bag. This is enough to let you know when the number of sheep is wrong, though you won't know what the number is.

That's how mathematicians count. It's called bijection.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#93

Post by brockwhittaker »

mitchty wrote: post #76
pluma wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow German here. I find it extremely annoying when people read out numbers for me to write down and announce pairs as numbers instead of digits. If you mean 42 and read out "zwei und vierzig" I will pause and have to figure out if you meant 240 and you know it. This kind of thing just seems almost intentionally inconsiderate because of the unnecessary ambiguity.

I'm slightly confused as a native English speaker here. zwei und vierzig versus zwei hundert vierzig are radically different to my ears. The counting thing is annoying but not as annoying as French numbers in my not so humble opinion. Though I guess English had it at one point with things like 4 score and 7 years ago (a score being 20 years, so 87 years ago) Guess maybe I'm weird but outside of the "flip last two num…

French numbers are actually quite easy though if you learn even a little bit of French.

You don’t think of quatre-vingt dix as four-twenties ten, you just think of it as ninety just like in English.

I suspect the same is true even for native speakers, your brain is going to pretty quickly map to the actual number it represents rather than the arithmetic statement.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#94

Post by Razengan »

hervature wrote: post #45
Razengan wrote: post #30

This brings up a point that has always eerily intrigued me: Can you even count at all -without- a language? Visually, you might be able to do it; e.g. seeing a clump of 5 trees and knowing it’s 5 without having to “say” “five” in your head. But try tapping on the desk or clapping your hands and counting how many times you did it without saying/thinking “1, 2, 3, 4...” I wonder if associating a transient stream of inp…

Isn't clapping five times enough to count to five? Like saying "one" five times would be enough to convey to me that you mean five.

I meant try clapping, tapping, listening to a repeating sound, or watching cars or people go by, at an arbitrary pace without rhythm, for a while before trying to recall how many it was, without saying a number in your head for each instance you note.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#96

Post by Razengan »

cwkoss wrote: post #88
Razengan wrote: post #30

This brings up a point that has always eerily intrigued me: Can you even count at all -without- a language? Visually, you might be able to do it; e.g. seeing a clump of 5 trees and knowing it’s 5 without having to “say” “five” in your head. But try tapping on the desk or clapping your hands and counting how many times you did it without saying/thinking “1, 2, 3, 4...” I wonder if associating a transient stream of inp…

My evopsych class in college touched on this. Brains can track a number of discrete objects (from 3 to ~7, depending on species and maturity). Once we get past this number, brains tends to interpret it as 'many'. From the studies we looked at, it appears that the brain can innately count within this number, but reverts to 'many' representation after it. Ex. crows can count three people going into an obscured area wit…

Wow, so language lets us get past that limit.

And numbers are a computed property, so we don't have to know all the possible numbers, just the rules:

    let firstIndex = 0

    var nextIndex: Number { return nextNumberBasedOnSomeRules() }
And so it's helpful to have a language with a sensible numeric system, after all. :)

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#97

Post by twiceaday »

otikik wrote: post #13

I thank the French for the metric system. But their numbers between 70 and 100 are bonkers. 70 is pronunced "60 10". 71 is "60 11". And so on until 80, which is pronounced, obviously, "4 20". 81 is "4 20 1". It goes up to 90, which is "4 20 10". 91 is "4 20 11". The craziness continues until 100, which is, thankfully, a different word ("cent", instead of "4 20 20", or, dear lord, "60 40"). But in 170 it all comes bac…

Interestingly “Four score and seven years ago” is "4 20 7" meaning 87.

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#98

Post by bryal »

mitchty wrote: post #76
pluma wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow German here. I find it extremely annoying when people read out numbers for me to write down and announce pairs as numbers instead of digits. If you mean 42 and read out "zwei und vierzig" I will pause and have to figure out if you meant 240 and you know it. This kind of thing just seems almost intentionally inconsiderate because of the unnecessary ambiguity.

I'm slightly confused as a native English speaker here. zwei und vierzig versus zwei hundert vierzig are radically different to my ears. The counting thing is annoying but not as annoying as French numbers in my not so humble opinion. Though I guess English had it at one point with things like 4 score and 7 years ago (a score being 20 years, so 87 years ago) Guess maybe I'm weird but outside of the "flip last two num…

Parent is referring to situations where you pronounce the numbers pairwise with regards to the digits. Like we (or at least I and my friends) in english pronounce screen resolutions: 720p => "seven twenty p", and years: 1984 => "nineteen eighty-four".

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#99

Post by cwkoss »

Razengan wrote: post #96
cwkoss wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My evopsych class in college touched on this. Brains can track a number of discrete objects (from 3 to ~7, depending on species and maturity). Once we get past this number, brains tends to interpret it as 'many'. From the studies we looked at, it appears that the brain can innately count within this number, but reverts to 'many' representation after it. Ex. crows can count three people going into an obscured area wit…

Wow, so language lets us get past that limit. And numbers are a computed property, so we don't have to know all the possible numbers, just the rules: let firstIndex = 0 var nextIndex: Number { return nextNumberBasedOnSomeRules() } And so it's helpful to have a language with a sensible numeric system, after all. :)

A similarly interesting study: ability to create sentences using prepositional phrases, like "left of the red wall", predicts performance on a disoriented search task.

https://wesfiles.wesleyan.edu/home/ashusterman/ConferencePos...

Re: Counting in the wrong language

#100

Post by earenndil »

ken wrote: post #12

A simpler problem is months. The English system uses arbitrary names, while Japanese/Chinese/Korean just call them "1-month", "2-month", etc. Even though I grew up with it, I find the English system impenetrable. Quick, what's 3 months before November? I have to count it out every time. (In mod 12, -3 is the same as +9, so I just count forward 9 months.) The names of the months are a nice nod to our Roman history but…

Hebrew days are numbered as well (first day, second day, third day), with the exception of saturday. 3 months before november isn't bad, though, at least imo, although I do convert everything to numbers as soon as I can. So november -> 11 -> 8 -> august. But I know what number is associated with every number; don't have to count up.
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