OOC: Numbers in Mating Flight (slight revision)

[sythyry]

Some characters in Mating Flight use duodecimal. They are pretty emphatic about it -- they get annoyed when they discover that the natives of the new world have ten fingers because that means the wrong base, kind of thing. Duodecimal is a distinct point of pride with them.

Which means they use it everywhere, and powers of twelve too. Including metaphoric and approximate speech. So they'll say things like "A duodecade or two" not "a decade or two". I'm pretty happy with that.

The higher powers of twelve aren't so nice. scruff points out that twelve-cubed is a "great gross", though...

All actual numbers in the book are translated to decimal, by the way. Duodecimal only appears in approximate speech ("a dozen times that" vs. "ten times that"). Plus in multiples of things -- weeks are 12 days long, the dragons want a dozen times something as punative damages, etc. I'm not worried about most of this usage.

[Poll #1151730]

Comments

[mazlynn.livejournal.com]

I think the gross and great-gross usage is just fine, as long as it is explained at some point in the text, as I'm not sure the general reading public would be able to translate it effectively. But it could certainly be a side comment when they're marveling at the insanity of the twelve base system.

The other option if you want to make things more self explanatory and avoid the negative connotations of "Gross" would be to call it a "dozen-square" and "dozen-cube" or so forth.

Have you considered coming up with alternate terms for 11 and 12 in the language? Since "duodecade" is basically in reference to base 10, it's unlikely they'd use that particular term, and since I don't think the average public will intuitively recognize it without looking it up, creating your own naming system would probably scan just as well. I think "dozen" works find as a translation from their language since it doesn't really rely on base 10 specifically in the name, so maybe a "dozen-year" instead of a duodecade?

Just some random ramblings - no idea if they'd make sense in the context of your world setting. Every once in a while something comes along that makes me try to see from the viewpoint of a completely alien view point - I spent several hours trying to come up with a better name for the "alien section" in B5 (which my husband and I are watching since I hadn't seen it before) since it bothered me because the "aliens" probably wouldn't refer to themselves as such....

[mazlynn.livejournal.com]

er... make that "marveling at the insanity of the base 10 system"....

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Dozenal is actually a legit english alternate term for duodecimal, and less ten-derived. I think "gross" is likely to keep cueing "disgusting" as least as much as "144" for people.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

Also, here.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

My mind is straining, waking up early for it in the morning, and is trying to figure out how to multiply the use of Fortnight into a year or century equation, and is failing to do so...

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

I recommend reading through http://www.dozenal.org/ for ideas about language in a duodecimal world.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[kulhain.livejournal.com]

I keep reading "gross" as "icky" instead of a number.

--
Lost Dragon

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

*nod* I would just make up words in their language for these things and then explain them in a glossary, with some context cues in the text so people can get the idea that a "frit" is a lot, not a little. Then if they want to know just how big a lot they can go look it up.

[calamitous-cani.livejournal.com]

(('Great-grosses' is something I can deal with, though it is an odd word. For whatever reason, I balk at "great-grosses upon great-grosses". I don't know why.))

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[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

The only one that seems rough to my ears is "duodecade," and I might be inclined to replace that with "a dozen years." But that's taking it out of context. I've read a few other books where the aliens counted in alternate bases, and it usually works en masse.

Did you see my post a while back about bases in my desert language? They have a different word for "ten" in every base.

[allessindra.livejournal.com]

Reading the other comments, I think I more or less agree with the ones that say it really shouldn't relate to ten at all. My big problem with great-grosses of years is that it doesn't flow on my tongue, I'm tripping over it. (and i'm the one who sits there and reads my own writing with my huge words in it out loud and have no problem at all, whereas other people complain that I'm too verbose and specific.)

THink of how some words have ended up compressed/conjuncted over years. 'dubduzzen' for double dozen...

just some thoughts

[archadia.livejournal.com]

/agree

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

As the single 'do away with duodecimal' voter, I'll explain: the whole book is being translated to English anyways (or fictionally so), and it's conventional in such matters for the translator to convert numbers to the decimal system. I think the occasional duodecimal reference is fine, but I'd rather see use of English numerical words and phrases.

In other words:

Ten = 'dozen' - this is fine

Hundred = 'dozen dozens' or 'twelve twelves' - these start to seem 'pushy' about the duodecimal idea. Using 'century' seems more acceptable since it conveys much the same concept and you don't have to be specific that a century is 100 years.

Thousand = 'grand' - I like this the most of the 'view others' answers' since a 'grand' again, doesn't have to be specifically 1000.

[deor.livejournal.com]

I agree that the best idea is to simply use a different set of words; especially avoiding "gross" due to its connotations. For large numbers, 'thousands' or 'century' would be okay, as those might be understood to be approximate anyway.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Jyothky is, indeed, pushy about duodecimal.