Counting on fingers, toes and yams
I got a good comment on the Husserl stuff by email from anders:
Husserl seems preoccupied with verbal names for inauthentic numbers. The traditional way that people have kept inauthentic numbers stable is
by assigning them to locations on their body, with a reproducible
procedure for assigning number to location. The verbal names in many
cultures reference the body part associated with that number.
Embarrassingly I emailed back to ask for examples of this arcane technology of 'assigning them to locations on their body', and then immediately remembered that, um, counting on your fingers exists. But there are more interesting variations, as documented in 12 Mind Blowing Number Systems From Other Languages (I only use the finest reputable sources on this notebook... seriously though it's reasonably good for a listicle). Toes, for example, if you want to get out of Husserl's 'authentic representation' range. Or 'the next man's toes' if you want to count higher:
Tzotzil, a Mayan language spoken in Mexico, has a vigesimal, or base-20, counting system. Why might a base-20 system come about? Fingers and toes! For numbers above 20, you refer to the digits of the next full man (vinik). Twenty-one is jun scha'vinik (first digit of the second man), 42 is chib yoxvinik (second digit of the third man), and 70 is lajuneb chanvinik (tenth digit of the fourth man).
Or whatever this is:
This is from the Oksapmin language of Papua New Guinea.
Anders sent another good link, about a base-6 number system in another New Guinea language, Ngkolmpu. Why 6? Yams, apparently, which are culturally important and can be arranged into a kind of flower shape of six for counting purposes. This language has number names extending to 6^5 = 7776.
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