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Cherokee Numerals

(thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
91 points horseradish | 3 comments | 20 Mar 21 02:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.786s | source
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JdeBP ◴[20 Mar 21 08:15 UTC] No.26521599[source]▶
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.

Also, not enough is made of the fact that the numeral system was based upon United States decimal coinage. Viewed in terms of 1 cent, 5 cent, and 10 cent coins, with the added notion of a barred gate for 1 to 5 (as explained), the numerals actually make a lot of sense; especially if one considers them as erosions into arcs and squiggles caused by rapidly drawing the original full circles and bars.

* 1 to 5 are the five-barred gate with the downward bars mostly elided or reduced to squiggles for speed and the pen not removed from the paper in between bars.

* 6 to 10 are a 5 cent piece reduced to an arc plus one to five 1 cent pieces as bars, again mostly elided.

* 11 to 15 are a 10 cent piece still mostly a circle plus one to five 1 cent pieces.

* The 30 to 90 symbols are the superscript notation described in Lowery's biography, but prefixed instead of suffixed. 50, for example, is a prefixed 5, as reduced to a squiggle, before a 10 cent piece.

The text states that numerals above 20 had the numerals from 1 to 9 appended. By implication, therefore: 16 to 25 are a 10 cent piece, plus a 5 cent piece, plus one or two barred gates of 1 cent pieces; and 26 to 29 are a 10 cent piece, plus two 5 cent pieces, plus some 1 cent pieces.

It would appear that Sequoyah didn't encounter 25 cent pieces often enough to warrant retaining them in the system as it evolved.

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felipelemos ◴[20 Mar 21 10:22 UTC] No.26522010[source]▶
Curiously I have never heard of it as Western numerals, but only as Arabic, and that's how I learned at school.
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blackshaw ◴[20 Mar 21 12:55 UTC] No.26522871[source]▶
To make matters more confusing, modern Arabs don't use the numerals we call "Arabic": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Arabic_numerals
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Mediterraneo10 ◴[20 Mar 21 13:23 UTC] No.26523044[source]▶
There are however Arab regions where it is more common to see so-called "Western/Arabic" numerals used instead of the native-Arabic-script numerals. This is the case of Morocco, for instance.
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kragen ◴[20 Mar 21 18:47 UTC] No.26525123[source]▶
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.
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Mediterraneo10 ◴[20 Mar 21 20:23 UTC] No.26525835[source]▶
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.
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1. kragen ◴[20 Mar 21 21:05 UTC] No.26526063[source]▶
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.

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2. Mediterraneo10 ◴[20 Mar 21 23:10 UTC] No.26526754[source]▶
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.
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3. kragen ◴[20 Mar 21 23:33 UTC] No.26526888[source]▶
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".)

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†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.