Why Are Numbers Weird???

Misadventures and Musings

Looking at exceptions in different number systems

Ideas are formed when you’re most relaxed. And that always seems to be the case for me. I was on the road to pick up a few things from a store, and en route, a weird idea popped in my head.

The number 12 in Tamil is Pannirendu or Pannendu (colloquially), which is an exception in the 10s series. The usual series for 10s goes like “Pathi-” followed by the number.

(11) Pathinonru, (13) Pathimoondru, (14) Pathinaangu, (15) Pathinainthu, (16) Pathinaaru, (17) Pathinezhu, (18)Pathinettu, and (19)Pathhonbathu.

12 is an exception.

Then the obvious struck; heck, even in English, there’s an exception for number 12. Twelve. Eleven. Not Firsteen and Seconteen like the rest of the 10s series.

This is prevalent in Hindi numerals too, where multiple numbers have exceptions. Spanish numerals as a whole appear messy to me, and Japanese numerals have tonnes of exceptions to the patterns too.

Why DO numbers in various languages seem to have exceptions??

While there seems to be a very possible explanation as to why, in English and German, the words corresponding to 11 and 12 are different. It still seems to be a mystery in other languages.

12 is a number divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6, while also being just above 10. Having hands which can count up to 10 definitely plays a huge factor in having a base 10 numeral system.

The English eleven and twelve, or the German elf and zwölf, have been traced to ein-lif and zwo-lif; lif being old German for ten. We can notice the similarity between these numbers that were passed down to these languages.

It’s observed that common quantities used in day-to-day life are given a special, relatively easier name for general use. As a Wikipedia article on Tamil numerals points out, there seem to be specific names for commonly used fractions in Tamil (which is currently not in use).

So when trying to search for more information, I came across this question in stack exchange etymology about the speciality of numbers and their naming. According to one user:

It’s almost vague and mysterious to try figuring out which civilization used what base for their numerals and why they chose that. But I guess this shows that the base 10 decimal system is not the only numeral system used by ancient humans.

A quick tangent to this point, is that the Mesopotamian civilization is known to have used numbers with a base 60, using 5 fingers in one hand to count 10s, and 4 fingers (excluding the thumb) on the other hand along with 3 segments in each finger. This gives a cumulative 5*4*3 = 60.

In the case of Sanskrit numbers, it appears as though it doesn’t have exceptions in numbering till 99, I discovered this a little while after I was done with this odd piece. It’s possible to deduce the word for any number as long as the related 10s place is known, which is indeed quite surprising that there was such order.

What was my point in writing this? Well, other than a documentation of my curiosity, this doesn’t serve much purpose. I was super excited to find out that all I thought I knew about numbers is wrong. At the end of the day, isn’t learning something new reason enough to explore weird ideas?

If this post did irk the curiosity in the readers’ mind, then feel free to visit the links I’ve included below to explore more:

References:

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