Hexadecimal number reading for everyone?

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Pokun
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by Pokun »

Yeah well it's not a natural part of the language so it can't really be helped. But it is a problem that you can't speak of headeximal numbers very easy because there's no way to pronounce them in a satisfying way, and that also makes it hard to think about at first.

I think since 30 means 3 times 10 (in Swedish it's very clear), then $30 should mean 3 times 16 or it would make little sense. So in Swedish $30 would be tresexton, too long to say! I guess a new short word for sixteen is in order.
FrankenGraphics wrote:
pokun wrote:People that only took the mandatory math course in Swedish high schools probably don't even know what a number base is at all.
I remember that the subject was touched somewhere in fifth or sixth grade (we talked about number bases 2, 8, 10, 16 and 20, used fingers and toes (and spaces between them) and got to try the mayan number system along with the latin), and returned to in eighth grade, with some conversion problems to solve. That was late 90s-millenium shift.
I don't remember that, I guess it wasn't anything universal in the school curriculum, just something your school did. I do remember number bases and even a bit about computers was taught in senior high school (gymnasium) math course C (I think).
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FrankenGraphics
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Yeah, it's a bit confusing that the ten-base is baked into the word.

How about replacing "ten" as base with "hex"; as a short form for hexadeca (sixteen)? It'd work in any language not specifically using hex for six.

$30 = thirhex (or threehex, if in an overarticulate language, like trehex in swedish)
$33 = thirhexthree or thirhex-and-three
$A0 = Ahex (ey-hex)
$80 = Eighthex (clear audible difference from Ahex)

teens don't make sense either in a hexadecimal base since they imply a ten. Just better to say:

$13 = Hexthree (one hexadecade is implied)
I do remember number bases and even a bit about computers was taught in senior high school (gymnasium) math course C (I think).
I do remember our 8th grade mathbook having a special section for it, with bits of history thrown in - how programmable jacquard looms and punch cards worked, something about alan turing, and how computers went from mechanical to electronic. I never took math course C because i went with the arts programme in gymnasium/senior high school. I think math D and up were only required by those taking science with the CS profile, so i guess that's where the computers + math parts seriously began.
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by tepples »

Sogona wrote:
tepples wrote:
  • $10 called "steen"
  • $20 and $30 called "twensy" and "thirsy"
  • $100 called "one page"
Why not just keep things simple and keep 0-9 the same?
Zero through nine are the same, but anything greater than nine needs different names that do not collide with names that already have a decimal meaning. I had planned to contrast, say, thirty (30 decimal) with thirsy (30 hexadecimal), so that "$30 is another name for 48" can be read as "thirsy is another name for forty-eight".
FrankenGraphics wrote:How about replacing "ten" as base with "hex"; as a short form for hexadeca (sixteen)? It'd work in any language not specifically using hex for six.
That was the idea behind -steen and -sy used as the hex analog of -teen and -ty.
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by toggle switch »

i can only wish i had friends who understood hex well enough that i could even consider this a problem worth thinking about!
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

That was the idea behind -steen and -sy used as the hex analog of -teen and -ty.
Oh, right. I'm only worried it's a little too similar, easy to mishear, or be interpreted as a slip on the keyboard for a soon-to-be-intitiate.
For example, "eightsy" and "asy" are/look/sound very close, as are "eightsy" and "eighty" - especially in crossnational conversations where accents come into play.

On the other hand, it won't have the incompatibility problem with greek (using hex as short form for hexadeca, even though that's normal in computer science speak).

Edit:
"Hex" would be easy to expand to larger numbers in a self-explanatory fashion.

$100 = Hexdred
$1000 = Hexand

So a larger number like $723A would be "seven-hexand two-hexdred and thir-hex ey". A little smurfy, but at least there won't any mistakes it's hexadecimal base. :lol:
Rahsennor
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by Rahsennor »

I just spell out the digits. Like reading out "one hundred" as "one zero zero", I read out numbers like $C000 and $2007 as "hex see zero zero zero" and "hex two zero zero seven".

I speak computer languages better than English anyway so why try to English-ize them? :wink:
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by Pokun »

Yeah that's the only way to do it at the moment. But it takes a lot of space in my short-term memory so I can't keep track on many digits at the same time that way. I often cheat and read $50 as fifty (or actually the Swedish counterpart) and the like, and it works as long as there is no letters other than in the ones digit.
tepples wrote:
FrankenGraphics wrote:How about replacing "ten" as base with "hex"; as a short form for hexadeca (sixteen)? It'd work in any language not specifically using hex for six.
That was the idea behind -steen and -sy used as the hex analog of -teen and -ty.
Oh I misread -sy as -ty. So -sy is times 16, now it makes sense. I'd thought maybe it would be better to do away with the -teen suffix to keep things consistent. $10 would be onesy or something. But on the other hand I guess you use -steen for all numbers between $10 and $1F so it is quite consistent already (unlike decimal numbers that use -teen for 13 to 19 only).


OK let's invent the Swedish pronunciation then (just for fun).
I'll steal the idea with -sy and call "times 16" as "se" (short for sexton). The "e" is a short vowel.

$0 to $9 are same as in decimal
$A to $F are same as in alphabet
$10 is "ense" (en * 16) (or ettse, either is fine)
$20 is "tvåse" (to keep things consistent, screw Swedish "tjugo")
$40 is "fyrse" (screw the pronunciation of "fyrtio" as well)
$60 is "sexse" (OK this one is hard to pronounce, maybe "se" wasn't such a good idea after all)
$80 is "åttse" (two-syllable numbers are reduced to one syllable)
$90 is "nise" (even "nio" is reduced to a single syllable)
$A0 is "ase" (letters doesn't seem to be a problem)
$B0 is "bese"
$E0 is "ese" (note that the first "e" is a long vowel like the letter E is pronounced)
etc

"Times 256" is "te" (again short vowel) short for "tvåhundrafemtiosex":
$100 is "ente" (or "ette", tripple consonant not allowed in Swedish)
$800 is "åtte"
$B00 is "bete"
etc

"Times 4096" is "fe" short for "fyratusennittiosex"
$1000 is "enfe" (or "ettfe")
etc


Example: $74E2 is read as "sjufefyrteesetvå".

Maybe I should've posted it in the Swedish section, not sure how many people look there though. Thoughts?
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

I'm sorry, i don't think that's very human oriented (basing the vowels for $100 and $1000 on half acronyms for 256, 4096). :? It also becomes quite the tounge twister since fe, te, se are similar and intermix sonically with (swedish) words for the numerals, while not resembling their decimal-base equivalents; making them harder to memorize and recall.

I think mimicking the oral formula of decimal-based counting while still sounding distinct enough not to be mistaken should be the maxim.
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by Pokun »

I agree with you. I used "se" because it's short, easy to say, inspired by Tepple's -sy suffix and because it still has some relation to 16 which it is based on. But the others was mainly made to be similar to "se" in order to make a consistent pattern. We could use another vowel than "e" that is not A or E. I thought of "o" first: "so", "to", "fo" etc. And maybe change the consonants as well to avoid the tripple consonant sound in sexse. Alternatively they all use different vowel and consonant to make them more distinct from each other. Like so for 16, te for 256, fu for 4096 etc.

I'm not sure what you mean they can be made to sound like their decimal equalents though? The decimal equalents are 16, 256, 4096 etc which only have very long compound words in decimal. I see no choice but to make up new short words for them. But yeah some kind of logical system to make them easier to remember would be nice.
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Oh, i wasn't very clear there... It's not a mathematical equivalent, but a linguistic. I can't speak for other languages due to lack of experience, but many european languages share the same root for powers of [base].

Germanic languages:
Hundert, Tausand.
Hundred, Thousand.
Hundra, tusen.

The word for hundred is another in finnish (and presumably other finnic languages):
Sata, Tuhat

Sata is also shared with the slavic group, like in polish:
Sto, Tysiąc (c is pronounced ts)

So, all in all, these words represent different powers without litteraly spelling out ten times ten, or ten times ten times ten, specifically. Or if they did, it's very much lost in history.

That, unlike ten (-teen, -ty) makes them perfect for fusion with other bases than ten. That was my basis for the proposal hexdred, hexand (which can be translated to just about any of these groups at least without hassle). Hex is short for hexadecade, the suffix lets you know what power of the hexadecade.

Rephrased: Hexdred is short form for hexadecade-dred: 16x16. -dred is assumed to mean "times [base]" no matter what the base is.

Perhaps more importantly, it doesn't take more time (at least in germanic languages) to say hexdred - or shorter. Two hundred has the same speaking rythm as Two hexdred. Compare with Två hexdra. Zwei hexert. It's the same, which makes it easy and natural to use.

Some other languages are a little worse off, rythm-wise: Hexsto (or perhaps heksto since x is not natively used in polish and represents a "cha" sound in other related languages, including russian), hexata. Native speakers are free to object my attempts to synthesize new words. :lol:

Generally, i believe it's better to add a syllable than subtract one to the power denominator, because many languages mostly have one-syllable words for their numerals and two-syllable words for their denominators, or a syllable with a more or less articulate difton (nine, neun, nio). So that's good for distinguishing power denominators fron numerals, but i don't know how that would sound in a two-or-more-syllable numeral system, like finnish where one is yksi and seven is seitsemän, for example.
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by Pokun »

I meant linguistic too, but I see that you were talking about the use of power of the base in these languages.
I'm not sure how this would work in Japanese though. Hekusuhyaku? Hekkyaku? It would be hard to split "hyaku" (100) to use as a suffix for "hex-", as it is really already a single morpheme, and 1000 is even worse. Or Greek for that matter, I don't like that hex sounds like 6 rather than 16. Inventing another word without conflicts that replaces "hex" would solve that last problem though. And it wouldn't be hard to memorize because in your system you use it all the time. How about something like "heka"? It ends in a vowel so it's easy to combine with the numeral morphemes.
Generally, i believe it's better to add a syllable than subtract one to the power denominator, because many languages mostly have one-syllable words for their numerals and two-syllable words for their denominators, or a syllable with a more or less articulate difton (nine, neun, nio). So that's good for distinguishing power denominators fron numerals, but i don't know how that would sound in a two-or-more-syllable numeral system, like finnish where one is yksi and seven is seitsemän, for example.
Maybe so, though the only language I know that strictly has single-syllable numerals (for single digit numbers) is Chinese. I'd be surprised if having triple-syllable numerals would be unique to Finnish anyway.
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by tepples »

For the higher powers of sixteen, it might be helpful to figure out where various languages' words for hundred and thousand came from in the first place in order to see where analogies can be drawn.
  • Proto-Indo-European word for hundred was *kmtóm, from which Latin centum and Welsh kant is clearly descended. PIE had two k sounds, one in front that became s in Slavic and Indic, and another in back, similar to Arabic q, that remained k everywhere. PIE k became Germanic h, leading to the first syllable of "hundred". Based on similarity to PIE *dékmt meaning "ten", it may have arisen from idiomatic use of "the tenth [something]", likely "the tenth group of ten".
  • Latin mille and Greek χίλια (earlier χίλιοι) come from a Proto-Indo-European phrase meaning "a full hand"; thousand is from a different PIE word.
I was planning to use "one page" for $100 (sixteen sixteens), perhaps explained in-universe as the number of words that can fit on a handwritten sheet of paper.
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by lidnariq »

tepples wrote:I was planning to use "one page" for $100 (sixteen sixteens), perhaps explained in-universe as the number of words that can fit on a handwritten sheet of paper.
8086 (real mode) idiom uses "one paragraph" for $10 and "one page" for $100.
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Myask
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by Myask »

^^^Neat! Any further, like $1000?
I keep forgetting and losing both of these links. Trying to find them actually turns up a few other people trying to neologize over this exact problem, too.

That last link produces that Nystrom came up with a system for working in hexadecimal, the Tonal System, 150 years ago. It doesn't look too compatible with the hexadecimal notation we use today, though, what wth 9 being reassigned…
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Re: Reading hexadecimal numbers everyone?

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Neat indeed. Short answer at the moment but that could definitely work, especially as it has some prior use and is clear. In speech and thought "paragraph" needs to be cropped, though, to be practical. Par or para perhaps. I'm uncertain if page needs a similar treatment. It could be -pa, to make it fluid (pronounced pay), but would clash with the next numeral if it is A. On the other hand, language often inserts a consonant sound precisely for that reason so it could as well be pa-b, page-a, and both would be easily recognizable as the same power.

Some examples to help discern what's best:

$43B = fourpage thirpara-b - /fɔː(r)peɪdʒ θɜːrˈpærə beː/

or

= four-pa thirpar b - /fɔː(r)pei θɜːrpær beː/

or a combo/compromise.

1:s can still be implied:

$10 = par
$20 = twenpar/twopar
$100 = page
$200 = twopage

teens are made redundant:
$13 = parthree / parathree
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