221–230 of 270 posts
I vaguely recall this was an important fact to know for a 90s puzzle video game. Maybe it was The Seventh Guest? Or Myst?
(Ok, that originated from the sequel, but it's still canonical to the universe.)
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Dang that just hit me. They were around for 1 THOUSAND years. I'm an Indian-American, and the country I was born in has only been around since 1947 and America since 1776. In terms of "empires" that were founded, its crazy how young our modern societies are compared to Rome.
I mean... most European countries (modulo some exceptions like Germany) existed (non-continuously) for at least a thousand years.
Many countries have an 'origin story' which implies that they are the same thing as random countries or regions which had similar names/languages/locations but in the vast majority cases these are something between a loose approximation and a myth.
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> I mean... most European countries (modulo some exceptions like Germany) existed (non-continuously) for at least a thousand years. This is interesting to me. What does it mean for a country to exist non-continuously? I can understand making the case under some sort of continuity despite dramatic changes in e.g. control of land or type of government. Sort of like a nation-state Ship of Theseus. But I don't understand…
I don't think anyone claims it's /exactly/ the same entity (except in a legal sense after a government-in-exile is restored home, such as after World War II). But there's a general sense that a country can in some way be a continuation of a previous one, particularly if it shares the same language and a similar territory. Compare the borders of something like the Duchy of Bohemia and the modern-day Czech Republic. Th…
More like two polities which share a capital city, but barely have either a language or a geography in common. The idea that Bohemia is essentially Czechia has no more reliable historical basis than belief that it belongs to Greater Germany, or to Czechoslovakia.
> The numerical notation of 4 is IV in Roman numerals. Using "IIII" instead of "IV" isn't even necessarily wrong. Rome was a big empire with a widely-distributed populace that lasted for a thousand years. The usage of numerals changed over time and according to context: "While subtractive notation for 4, 40 and 400 (IV, XL and CD) has been the usual form since Roman times, additive notation to represent these numbers…
One cool thing about the purely additive notation is that you can then add numbers together by just gathering up all their characters, sorting largest to smallest, and combining any groups of 5 or more.
> The numerical notation of 4 is IV in Roman numerals. Using "IIII" instead of "IV" isn't even necessarily wrong. Rome was a big empire with a widely-distributed populace that lasted for a thousand years. The usage of numerals changed over time and according to context: "While subtractive notation for 4, 40 and 400 (IV, XL and CD) has been the usual form since Roman times, additive notation to represent these numbers…
Dang that just hit me. They were around for 1 THOUSAND years. I'm an Indian-American, and the country I was born in has only been around since 1947 and America since 1776. In terms of "empires" that were founded, its crazy how young our modern societies are compared to Rome.
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I mean... most European countries (modulo some exceptions like Germany) existed (non-continuously) for at least a thousand years.
This isn't true. The majority of countries are much younger than this. The thousand year old ones are the exceptions. Many countries have an 'origin story' which implies that they are the same thing as random countries or regions which had similar names/languages/locations but in the vast majority cases these are something between a loose approximation and a myth.
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> a country can in some sense be a continuation of a previous one, particularly if it shares the same language and a similar territory. This is the sort of thing that’s true, but only if you don’t think about it deeply. People in England definitely spoke English, but that doesn’t mean that we would be able to understand them. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote one of the first major works of literature in English, but 99.9% of E…
> This is the sort of thing that’s true, but only if you don’t think about it deeply. I have a linguistics degree and a passion for historical linguistics that will result in me talking your ear off about Indo-European ablaut, so this is probably the first time in my life I've ever been accused of failing to think deeply about language variation / change! But I do agree with tsunamifury's comment - what you say is in…
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Wouldn't that also work with IXIVIII on the die? How do you print IX with yours? An improvement would be IXIVIII actually, then all combinations can be located in that string.
> How do you print IX with yours? You rotate XI 180 degrees.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Capitali...
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This isn't true. The majority of countries are much younger than this. The thousand year old ones are the exceptions. Many countries have an 'origin story' which implies that they are the same thing as random countries or regions which had similar names/languages/locations but in the vast majority cases these are something between a loose approximation and a myth.
I think the above commenter's point is that "countries" doesn't just mean the formal nation state, but the cultural group. The nation of China was created on 1949. China is much older than 75 years. Likewise, Germanic tribes existed as far back as the Ancient World.
During the Yugoslav period, there was a minority group of Bulgarian migrants in one region of Yugoslavia. Like most linguistic groups they adopted the national language and believed themselves to be Yugoslav. However their group was sometimes referred to as 'Macedonian' because the corner of Yugoslavia near Bulgaria is also near Macedonia in Greece. They now have their own country (and language - whose only differences from Serbo-Croat are those which were intentionally introduced), and many believe themselves to be the descendants and cultural and spiritual heirs of Alexander the Great (even though Alexander reigned over and left an influence over a region bigger than Europe).
All countries have things like this in their history. It's just that generally they are a few hundred years further away.
IMHO there's an obvious reason not mentioned: due to their position on the dial and convention IV and VI would typically be depicted upside down, increasing the likelihood of confusing them—particularly with a semi-literate populace.
Hmm... I'm skeptical that anyone able to read a clock in the first place would be unaware that 4 comes before 5 and 6 comes afterward.
So why use a numeral at all? Well, there's always those people who will think that it is obviously wrong not to have numbers on a measuring instrument. Also, in early modern times, clocks were expensive items and expected to be ornate, especially as they were not all that good at keeping time.
