In English, it’s fairly easy to imagine that, say, XIII could be pronounced “three-ten,” or thirteen. Don’t know about what that might be like in Latin, though - maybe something similar. But then what about XL? How is that turned into forty? In English OR in Latin, or in whatever languages Roman numerals were used. Do we know how those concepts were spoken?
I love the dope. A question I’ve never considered, but now I need to know!
I’ve always gone around saying ex-ex-em-cee-eye-eye and whatnot. That can’t be right!
XIII = tredecim
XL = quadraginta
If you see a number like “undequadraginta”, you can understand it as 4 × 10 − 1
The question is really how numbers are expressed in Latin.
Or did the pronunciation of a number match the representation. From what I can tell from XL (40) it was unrelated.
Your answer for 1 to 100 is here.
Of course we know that. Latin is a well-documented language that was in continuous use in Europe from Antiquity well into the Modern Era; even after it ceased to be the native vernacular of a country, it was still actively used among educated classes, who learned it at a young age. It’s not fragmentary.
The astonishing thing about it is that the system is decimal, even though the Romans did not know the Arabic numerals that are based on the decimal system. Judging purely from the way they pronounced their numbers, you’d think they could have developed a positional system of numbers (such as the Arabic numerals, or binary), but strangely never did.
Very curious indeed, and very well put. The system is decimal, but the Romans tried to be parsimonious in their use of the number of characters needed for a given number, so they included the numbers V and L to avoid long strings of Is or Xs. If you don’t look too closely it seems to be base 5, but it is actually really base 10.
Why they never improved their clumsy notation system is a mistery to me. It almost seems they did not care at all.
It is clumsy. I suppose if that’s the system you use then the combinations are more recognizable, more readily for the big numbers beginning with a bunch of Ms, Cs, and an occasional D, but with enough use the numbers from 1 to 99 should also be understood at a glance. Maybe the lack of zero threw them off.
One of the major incentives to simplify the number system is naturally, accounting. Did the Romans who did all sorts of other excellent governmental works not really care about accounting? (Or science, possibly number two in number utility?)
I would have assumed when you are arranging to feed a Roman mob of thousands that tracking and paying for items would be important. Did they just become proficient at doing math in their heads, or did they do math tediously by borrowing I from V or X etc?
As I understand it, science was not a priority for Romans, that was something their Hellenic slaves had done in the past (very simplified story here). But your observation on accounting is spot on: weird.
They knew what the numbers were decimally to speak them. I remember seeing some explanation of how simple arithmetic was done with Roman numerals, don’t remember the details much except it seemed very complicated. Now realizing they understood decimal numbers to speak them or write them by name I think they would have done it very much like we do in our heads with no concerns of Is and Vs until recording a result.
Maybe they did care, but not everybody is an Archimedes-level genius.
Some Greek and Roman astronomers used e.g. the (already known) Babylonian positional numbering system. Look at page 48 here
to see a base-60 trigonometric table.
Yes, afaik, they just said the number. Kinda like asking how "3’ is pronoiunced. Which in Latin is
tres, or tria iirc.
As has been mentioned, the system doesn’t lend itself well to arithmetic. I recall reading once that if you needed multiplication done, you’d pay an expert who had big tables that they’d consult.
Here’s an even more surprising fact is that when the Arabic-Hindu number system was brought to Europe, it was widely rejected as too hard to learn. The man who brought it back was the son of an Italian merchant called Bonacci who had been sent to North Africa to manage his father’s business there. Can you guess the son’s name? Fibonacci, yes that Fibonacci
Yes, the Romans were not very interested in science, but they were heavily into engineering, so they could have had much need for the decimal system in that area too.
It’s not surprising that it’s a decimal system, or rather, base 10. It’s believed to have been based on the fingers on a hand, and that’s where the notation came from as well, then converted to letters
Then about being in a noisy market, or one where you don’t speak the same language as a merchant, and you want to buy some apples:
You want one apple, hold up one finger: I
Two apples, two fingers: II
Three apples, three fingers: III
Four apples, four fingers: IIII (Using IV was a later version; even in the medieval period, there are examples of IIII being used, on some clocks, for example.)
Five apples: hold up your hand, with the fingers together and the thumb separated: V
Six to nine apples: hold up one hand in the V, the other with the appropriate number of fingers.
Ten apples: hold up both hands, crossed: X.
Can’t you do all of those by just holding up the number of fingers the regular way? That’s a lot more intuitive.
For that kind of calculation, they usually used counting boards or abaci:
https://www.ecb.torontomu.ca/~elf/abacus/roman-hand-abacus.html