Finnish averages pretty close to 1 syllable per digit when you want it to.
Here's a Finn counting 1, 2, 3, ... 87 (and ending in very Finnish way):
Using fewer syllables to express numbers
31–40 of 45 posts
Re: Using fewer syllables to express numbers
#32This website is a useless exercise, but the idea in the submission title "using fewer syllables to express numbers" has utility. As a musician, I frequently need to count to a rhythm, and the pesky number seven's two syllables throws my cadence off. So I count a bar of 8 like this: > one, two, three, four, five, six, sev, eight Occasionally I'll need to count up to as high as 16, which is especially tricky. It'd be e…
Personally I prefer to use non-numerical word phrases (especially in odd meters) with the right number of syllables instead. If you want to you can even place accents where they're supposed to be with right words.
Can you share a few examples?
Re: Using fewer syllables to express numbers
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I prefer to use non-numerical word phrases (especially in odd meters) with the right number of syllables instead. If you want to you can even place accents where they're supposed to be with right words.
Can you share a few examples?
Well, they're mostly in my native language, but it would be something like "hor-ses jum-ping e-ver-glade" to count to 7 in 2-2-3 grouping
Re: Using fewer syllables to express numbers
#34This website is a useless exercise, but the idea in the submission title "using fewer syllables to express numbers" has utility. As a musician, I frequently need to count to a rhythm, and the pesky number seven's two syllables throws my cadence off. So I count a bar of 8 like this: > one, two, three, four, five, six, sev, eight Occasionally I'll need to count up to as high as 16, which is especially tricky. It'd be e…
I’ve settled on “sen” for seven when I want it short. Zero could also do with being a monosyllable, but at least we have “oh” and “nil” for that. Then there are letters. 25 of them are monosyllables (though a few like “aitch” and “kyoo” cut it fine), then w (double you) is three syllables, and not even right , it’s double vee. Unfortunately, once I mysteriously manage to right these two wrongs, power will go to my he…
W='dub'. It's not even a made up thing, plenty of people said 'dubdubdub dot' back in the days when people spoke urls aloud like savages.
Re: Using fewer syllables to express numbers
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve settled on “sen” for seven when I want it short. Zero could also do with being a monosyllable, but at least we have “oh” and “nil” for that. Then there are letters. 25 of them are monosyllables (though a few like “aitch” and “kyoo” cut it fine), then w (double you) is three syllables, and not even right , it’s double vee. Unfortunately, once I mysteriously manage to right these two wrongs, power will go to my he…
W='dub'. It's not even a made up thing, plenty of people said 'dubdubdub dot' back in the days when people spoke urls aloud like savages.
[deleted]
Re: Using fewer syllables to express numbers
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given all of music's esoteric conventions and historical vestiges, I'm surprised they don't zero index. Octaves divided into thirds and fifths, who decided that was ok?
Oof, "zero" is two syllables so we'll have to pronounce it "null".
Or use the preexisting naught.
Re: Using fewer syllables to express numbers
#37This website is a useless exercise, but the idea in the submission title "using fewer syllables to express numbers" has utility. As a musician, I frequently need to count to a rhythm, and the pesky number seven's two syllables throws my cadence off. So I count a bar of 8 like this: > one, two, three, four, five, six, sev, eight Occasionally I'll need to count up to as high as 16, which is especially tricky. It'd be e…
Omg! I had just been thinking about this and had written up a proposal but hadn't published it. We could organically make common usage accept a single-syllable 7. Here's the writeup: MAKE 7 MONOSYLLABIC There is a lot of research that, in languages where the numbers have more syllables, native speakers have a harder time remembering sequences of numbers, because your brain has to store the cognitive load of saying it…
May as well just use sept from French.
Re: Using fewer syllables to express numbers
#38This website is a useless exercise, but the idea in the submission title "using fewer syllables to express numbers" has utility. As a musician, I frequently need to count to a rhythm, and the pesky number seven's two syllables throws my cadence off. So I count a bar of 8 like this: > one, two, three, four, five, six, sev, eight Occasionally I'll need to count up to as high as 16, which is especially tricky. It'd be e…
In my father's accent/dialect (South Wales), the number seven is monosyllabic: it sounds more like "sevn" (with the v pronounced quite softly). The number "eleven" is similarly monosyllabic, and sounds more like "levn". I often use this when counting to a rhythm. Shame the numbers from thirteen onwards do have more than one syllable.
Re: Using fewer syllables to express numbers
#39I tried "4765" (four syllables), and got "sixty-nine squared plus four" (6 syllables). The ICAO phonetic alphabet specifically pronounces "4" as "fouwer", and "9" as "niner", so as to increase redundancy on a noisy channel.
You got "four thou-sand se-ven hun-dred six-ty-five" :)
Re: Using fewer syllables to express numbers
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Omg! I had just been thinking about this and had written up a proposal but hadn't published it. We could organically make common usage accept a single-syllable 7. Here's the writeup: MAKE 7 MONOSYLLABIC There is a lot of research that, in languages where the numbers have more syllables, native speakers have a harder time remembering sequences of numbers, because your brain has to store the cognitive load of saying it…
May as well just use sept from French.
That runs into the issue I was talking about in the proposal, where it's not backward-compatible and requires people to be informed of and sympathetic to the renaming. "Sen" will already be accepted as referring to 7, without such coordination, so long as it has enough context to be parsed as a number.