Cherokee Numerals • Hacker News Board

Re: Cherokee Numerals

#31

Post by kragen » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #29

kragen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I explained in more detail in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26525109 , those are "Western Arabic" numerals, not "Western/Arabic" numerals, because they were invented by the Arabs in Morocco and thereabouts, which is to the west of the Arabs in, for example, Syria.

Morocco today doesn’t use its native Arabic numeral system that diverged from that used in other Arab countries to the east, it uses the European system borrowed wholesale.

It's just a minor typographical variation, similar to how some lowercase "g" glyphs have a closed loop while others have just a hook, or how some Latin fonts have serifs and others don't. It's not a totally different numeral system like the Greek or Maya systems, or even a dramatically different set of glyphs like the Eastern Arabic or Brahmi numerals.

The old African numeral glyphs resemble today's European styles more closely than Caslon resembles blackletter, more closely than either resembles Palmer cursive, and more closely than any of the three resembles Roman monumental inscriptions (except, of course, for the upper case of Caslon). Yet we consider Caslon, blackletter, Palmer, and the inscriptions all to be the same Latin alphabet.

Re: Cherokee Numerals

#32

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 11:10 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #31

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Morocco today doesn’t use its native Arabic numeral system that diverged from that used in other Arab countries to the east, it uses the European system borrowed wholesale.

It's just a minor typographical variation, similar to how some lowercase "g" glyphs have a closed loop while others have just a hook, or how some Latin fonts have serifs and others don't. It's not a totally different numeral system like the Greek or Maya systems, or even a dramatically different set of glyphs like the Eastern Arabic or Brahmi numerals. The old African numeral glyphs resemble today's European styles m…

Again, Morocco uses the European system wholesale, not just local glyphs that bear a great resemblance to European glyphs. This development is a consequence of the French colonial era and the fact that most serious printing in the country is done in French, while Arabic is mainly (though not exclusively) treated as a language only of speaking and non-serious writing. Thus, even when Moroccans do write in Arabic, they use the same numbers known from French-language publications.

Re: Cherokee Numerals

#33

Post by kragen » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #32

kragen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a minor typographical variation, similar to how some lowercase "g" glyphs have a closed loop while others have just a hook, or how some Latin fonts have serifs and others don't. It's not a totally different numeral system like the Greek or Maya systems, or even a dramatically different set of glyphs like the Eastern Arabic or Brahmi numerals. The old African numeral glyphs resemble today's European styles m…

Again, Morocco uses the European system wholesale, not just local glyphs that bear a great resemblance to European glyphs. This development is a consequence of the French colonial era and the fact that most serious printing in the country is done in French, while Arabic is mainly (though not exclusively) treated as a language only of speaking and non-serious writing. Thus, even when Moroccans do write in Arabic, they…

Sure, but French uses the Moroccan† system wholesale, a consequence of developments predating the French colonial era. So Moroccans writing in Arabic have been using the same numbers known from French-language publications for some five centuries longer than the French-language publications have been using them, and some seven centuries longer than the cultural hegemony of French in the country. There wasn't some time in between when Moroccans were using Eastern Arabic numerals or classical Greek numerals or something.

Suppose you find that an Italian professor of computer science has published a computer science paper in Italian using Knuth's cmr10 font from California. Moreover, he has previously published papers in English, some also using cmr10, in part because he wants people in California to be able to read them, and Italian is mainly treated as a language of speaking and non-serious writing — or at any rate not for computer science.

Would you therefore say, "Italy today doesn't use its own native Latin alphabet that diverged from that used in Greece; it uses the Californian system borrowed wholesale, not just local glyphs that bear a great resemblance to Californian glyphs"? To me this sounds absurd, even though the cmr10 glyphs being used were designed in California.

(Perhaps the answer in this case is too obvious because "cmr10" is an abbreviation for "Computer Modern Roman 10 point", and Rome is in Italy, but on the other hand, we are discussing a system of numerals almost universally known as "Arabic".)

_______

†At the time that the French adopted it, political boundaries in the Maghreb were of course very different, so at the time Fibonacci might have said his numbers were the numbers used in the Almohad Caliphate; but before the Almohads conquered the Maghreb and al-Andalus, they were the Berber rulers of Tinmel, so I don't think it's a stretch to call them Moroccan. The numerals were already in use throughout the Maghreb before the Almohad conquest, though.

Re: Cherokee Numerals

#34

Post by bradrn » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 12:15 AM UTC

kragen wrote: post #25

bradrn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also interesting how history has taken us to the point that an anthropologist names a numeral system invented in India and brought to Europe via Africa "Western", because readers will understand that name, and uses that name in contrast to a system that was invented in the actual West. It is true that place value systems originated in India, but I would personally say that calling our numeral system ‘Indian’ w…

This is mostly correct and very interesting, but I'd like to correct a couple of errors: > Place-value systems are much younger; the first date from around 500 CE No, although place-value systems do seem to be younger than the non-place-value system the article calls "ciphered-additive", place-value numerals date from 02000 BCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_cuneiform_numerals#... However, there seems to b…

> No, although place-value systems do seem to be younger than the non-place-value system the article calls "ciphered-additive", place-value numerals date from 02000 BCE

This is of course correct; I should have mentioned it. (Though I was specifically talking about the numeral system 0123456789, which has no direct connection to the Babylonian numerals.)

> Even the Hindu decimal place-value numeral system is likely older than 00500 CE; the Bakhshali manuscript, which uses a dot for zero like modern Eastern Arabic numerals, probably dates from about 00300 CE.

As it happens, an earlier draft of my post did indeed say ‘300–500 CE’, but I cut it out because I figured the extra precision didn’t really add anything to the post. (Also, because no-one would care about exact dates; looks like I was wrong there!)

> It turns out that Arabic-speakers in Africa were using a divergent set of digits for the Hindu–Arabic place-value system, not descended from ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩, and these are entirely readable to modern European-educated eyes, except for the 4, which is rotated 90° and has a tail

Interesting, I hadn’t known this — thanks for the correction!

> These numerals are called "Western Arabic" because the Western Arabs in the Maghreb used them, as opposed to the Eastern Arabs in Arabia itself. It's not a juxtaposition of the names of two separate polities, "Western" and "Arabic".

I am aware of this, and I never meant to imply otherwise.

Re: Cherokee Numerals

#35

Post by kragen » Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 12:45 AM UTC

bradrn wrote: post #34

kragen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mostly correct and very interesting, but I'd like to correct a couple of errors: > Place-value systems are much younger; the first date from around 500 CE No, although place-value systems do seem to be younger than the non-place-value system the article calls "ciphered-additive", place-value numerals date from 02000 BCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_cuneiform_numerals#... However, there seems to b…

> No, although place-value systems do seem to be younger than the non-place-value system the article calls "ciphered-additive", place-value numerals date from 02000 BCE This is of course correct; I should have mentioned it. (Though I was specifically talking about the numeral system 0123456789, which has no direct connection to the Babylonian numerals.) > Even the Hindu decimal place-value numeral system is likely ol…

> Also, because no-one would care about exact dates; looks like I was wrong there!

You can always count on me to be a gigantic pedant! That was a really important time in mathematics—that's when we invented the Pulverizer Algorithm, for example.

> I am aware of this, and I never meant to imply otherwise.

I'm sorry I misread your comment!