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On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

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Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#231

Post by PontifexMinimus »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #213
jbandela1 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the Czars of Russia. The Romanovs were descending from the niece of the last Byzantine Emperor (Sophia Palaiologina niece of Constantine XI). So you are right that WWI can be argued to the real end of the Roman Empire!!! One of these days I am going to a series on “When did the Roman Empire End?” Currently, I have at least 10 plausible dates/events. It turns out to be a very interesting overview of a lot of even…

> Also the Czars of Russia. Yep. "Czar" = "Caesar". Likewise "Kaiser" in the Germanic regions. The British monarch was called "Kaisar-i-Hind" by Hindi-speaking people, when the subcontinent was controlled by the British.

Incidently, the last Caesar (the Czar of Bulgaria until 1946) is still alive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#232

Post by int_19h »

brabel wrote: post #186
nindalf wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you thought so. I meant it is a widely held belief among most people. They would feel a stronger affinity for their ancestors from a thousand years ago than for their neighbour, if their neighbour looked different to them. I meant to say that this idea that the people 1000 years ago being “my people” doesn’t hold up to close inspection. There is no continuity in a meaningful sen…

> I meant to say that this idea that the people 1000 years ago being “my people” doesn’t hold up to close inspection. I think what you're saying is absolutely true, and a better example would be culture in general. There's a certain continuity in the cultural practices of a people in a certain region, with religion being one of the most resilient... but also other things like food, music and, of course, language. How…

I don't know about Swedes, but here's (a subset of) modern Norwegians:

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

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#233

Post by Adverblessly »

dhosek wrote: post #48
tylerneylon wrote: post #33

I had heard that IV might be considered sacrilegious, as the god Jupiter would have once been spelled IVPPITER, as I was used for modern J and V for modern U.

There is a similar thing with Hebrew numerals¹ where 15 and 16 are usually written as תו and תז to avoid what would otherwise be forms of the name of God. ⸻ 1. The Hebrew numeral system, like the Greek numeral system is an almost-decimal system in that different letters are used for each of the different values, but the letters change by place value as well as by their individual value, so, e.g., 21 is written כא whe…

Minor correction: that's טו and טז.

אבגדהוזחט - count one through nine

יכלמנסעפצ - count ten through ninety

קרשת - count one hundred through four hundred

so תו would be 406 while טו is 9+6=15

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#234

Post by cal85 »

nine_k wrote: post #117
staplung wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, that's nothin'. The ancient Egyptians used a 365 day calendar (with no leap years) so it drifted by .25 days every year. So after 730 years it's essentially backwards (summer solstice is when winter solstice used to be etc.). After that, it starts coming back into alignment again but takes another 730 years to get there. They used their calendar for so long that it nearly had time to roll over like this twice!

My favorite factoid about ancient Egypt is that Cleopatra, the last pharaon queen of Egypt, lived much closer to the time when humans landed on Moon than to the time when the great pyramids were built.

Another one: T-Rex lived much closer to the time when humans landed on the moon than to the time when the stegosaurus existed.

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#235

Post by vik0 »

sorokod wrote: post #206
kibwen wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Putin still occasionally invokes Russia as the successor to the Eastern Roman Empire in an attempt to justify his imperial ambitions, so we're still riding this train.

There is a Russian name for Istanbul - Царьгра́д (Tsargrad). The relevancy of this traditional name in our time can be glimpsed from the media org tsargrad.tv , a Russian equivalent of fox news.

It's not just a Russian name, it's the Slavic name for Constantinople. It's used in all Slavic-speaking countries when teaching Byzantine history, of course, written with slight distortions depending on the Slavic language in question

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#236

Post by Manuel_D »

neilkk wrote: post #229
Manuel_D wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the only real connection between 'Germanic tribes' and the modern state of Germany is that people from the latter believe the former to be their forefathers. They are not genetically closer to them than other Europeans, nor do they speak the same language or call themselves the same word or have the same lifestyle or inhabit the same places. During the Yugoslav period, there was a minority group of Bulgarian migr…

No, there are continuities in language. It's changed over time, but it's still descended from those older cultures. French has it's roots in Frankish people that settled there in the migration period, with Latin and other influence. It's not just people arbitrarily claiming lineage. There are also specifics in culture and tradition, e.g. Christmas trees date back to pagan Germanic festivals.

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#238

Post by vik0 »

neilkk wrote: post #229
Manuel_D wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the only real connection between 'Germanic tribes' and the modern state of Germany is that people from the latter believe the former to be their forefathers. They are not genetically closer to them than other Europeans, nor do they speak the same language or call themselves the same word or have the same lifestyle or inhabit the same places. During the Yugoslav period, there was a minority group of Bulgarian migr…

>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.

Wow, this is... biased. Sincerely, a Macedonian.

People living in Macedonia (or, to avoid confusion, sigh... North Macedonia), have at one point (and even today, by some), yes, been called Bulgarians, but we've also been called Serbs and Greeks (in northern Greece, since Greece claims that everyone in Greece is Greek, lol). So, you claiming that we have only been Bulgarians, who, judging by the tone of your comment, got brainwashed into thinking we're Yugoslavs and after that Macedonians is absurd, to say the least.

Serbs tried to make us Serbs before Bulgarians tried to make us Bulgarian, and they too failed. You can't make up an entire nation in a top-down manner, the people living in those lands first have to show signs that they consider themselves as a separate nation from the rest in any given region, which the Macedonians have, time and again.

Now, to be fair to Serbs, there's a lot of Serbian cultural influence here, and a lot of people here do understand Serbian more than Bulgarian (even though Bulgarian and Macedonian are, on paper, more similar than Serbian and Macedonian), but still, they failed in trying to convince us to be Serbian rather than what we are now, a separate nation, Macedonian.

Also, the modern idea of a separate, sovereign Macedonian state for the Macedonian nation has existed since at least 1880*

> (and language - whose only differences from Serbo-Croat are those which were intentionally introduced)

1. And this is how I know you're not a Bulgarian because a true Bulgarian nationalist would claim that Macedonian is not its own language, but that it's only a dialect of Bulgarian.

2. There are a lot of differences on paper from Serbo-Croatian. It's closer to Bulgarian. Still, you don't create a language in a top-down manner. Read "Za makedonckite raboti" by Krste Petkov Misirkov.

> 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).

Not sure how true this is. There are some definitely, but I feel they're more of a very loud minority, or at least not the majority by a long shot. Anybody who is seriously claiming they're direct descendants of some guy who lived over 2 thousand years ago, and completely forgetting about everyone that has walked and mixed in that region between then and now (think of all the Greeks, Romans, Slavs, Jews, Ottomans, and everybody else I'm not mentioning) is to have his mental faculties questioned. This goes not only for my fellow denizens, but for anybody claiming such a historical connection to a long-lost civilization, and especially so for those who are geographically not related (I could name names, but that would further diverge this conversation.) But at the same time to claim that people living in present-day Macedonia (the entire region, not just the state) have no connection whatsoever, is, as well, stupid.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assembly_of_Macedonia... * https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:A_Manifesto_from_...

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#239

Post by dhosek »

zeven7 wrote: post #62
mariotacke wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I wonder if this is related to how Germans count/pronounce numbers. 21 in your example is "einundzwanzig" in German (or "ein-und-zwanzig", "one-and-twenty")

I think in this case it’s because Hebrew is read right to left, so unrelated.

Yep. The reversed order is also something that you see in archaic English, for example the nursery rhyme, “four and twenty blackbirds”

Re: On clock faces, 4 is Expressed as IIII, not IV

#240

Post by neilkk »

vik0 wrote: post #238
neilkk wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the only real connection between 'Germanic tribes' and the modern state of Germany is that people from the latter believe the former to be their forefathers. They are not genetically closer to them than other Europeans, nor do they speak the same language or call themselves the same word or have the same lifestyle or inhabit the same places. During the Yugoslav period, there was a minority group of Bulgarian migr…

>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. Wow, this is... biased. Sincerely, a Macedonian. People living in M…

Thanks for proving my point!
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