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stranger
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Could someone help me with the source of the term "lebenty leben"? I saw it's from Uncle Remus (on AWADmail Issue 157), but I haven't been able to find the story in which the term appears. Or, are there any other sources?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Thre are only three ghits for "elebenty leben" and "Uncle Remus": link. Two are for this thread, the original citation from AWADmail that you mention, and another site that contains a pastiche of the Uncle Remus stories written by Joel Chandler Harris ( link). A quick search through his works on Gutenberg reveal nothing. In fact, even when speaking in dialect, only the spelling eleven occurs: "Den w'en it seem lak de little Rabs, w'ich dey wuz mighty nigh forty-eleven un um, is all gone ter sleep, Brer Wolf, he crope 'roun', he did, en feel on de mantel-shelf, en feel, en feel, twel he come ter ole Brer Rabbit money-pus."
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Carpal Tunnel
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but, leventy-leven is *much more common - well, 219 gh. and there is much disagreement on the decimal equivalent thereof. eleven? twenty-one? seventy-seven? 101? 111? 121 (11 x 11)? or is it the same as eleventeen?
-joe (numbers are so inexacting) friday
edit: OED2 actually defined eleventeen as twenty-one!
editē: this unexpectedly cropped up on Google[books]:
There's a Monopoly game going on in the day room..."Gimme those dice. I'll blow this board to pieces. Here we go. Lebenty Leben. count me over eleven." - Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Last edited by tsuwm; 03/08/08 04:36 AM.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Isn't that how old Bilbo Baggins was on his birthday when he dsappeared?
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old hand
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Isn't that how old Bilbo Baggins was on his birthday when he dsappeared? No I think (going from memory alone 'cos I can't be bothered at 1:45am to look it up) that Bilbo disappeared on his eleventy-first birthday, which was 111. That would make eleventy-leven 121. But then again that's in a different universe from Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, so maybe they use different numbers there... 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Yeah. Eleventy-first. That sounds better. Course it might also be inferred that they were using some base other than 10. Twelve is always a good choice, meaning that eleventy-one would be 133 base 10.
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old hand
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Yeah. Eleventy-first. That sounds better. Course it might also be inferred that they were using some base other than 10. Twelve is always a good choice, meaning that eleventy-one would be 133 base 10. hmm. Hobbits have ten fingers just like us. Wonder how many fingers foxes and rabbits have? (Not counting Bugs Bunny who would have eight I think)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Hobbits have ten fingers just like us. That would certainly tend to make one think decimal, but we do have remnants of a base twelve system lurking about in little hidey-holes in our language and it's a good system for fractional parts of the number represented by 10. Twelve is divisible by two, three, four, and six. The existence of a word for one more than ten that can have the -ty suffix does suggest that the base of the system is greater than ten. One way to derive a base twelve system from finger counting is to count on the knuckles.
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old hand
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One way to derive a base twelve system from finger counting is to count on the knuckles. Gives a whole new meaning to the expression knucklehead...
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stranger
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Many thanks for your comments. I've seen "leventy-leven" meaning 111 or 121 so far. Anyway, the soumd has a nice ring compared to "one hundred and eleven" or "one hundred and twenty-one" .
Maybe cartoon characters have eight fingers at least for a technical reason.
Well, "lebenty-leben" seems rather rare for English speaking people, right? I wonder if there is a possibility that the phrase appeared in "Song of the South" in conversation, but I have no means to find out...
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Pooh-Bah
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One way to derive a base twelve system from finger counting is to count on the knuckles. base 14 if you include the thumb
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Carpal Tunnel
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When I'm finger-counting base twelve I use the thumb as the counter. It's done on the outside of the hand and starts with the thumb on the tip of the index finger for one, to the first knuckle for two to the second knuckle for three, to the tip of the middle finger for four, etc. When I finger-count base sixteen I start with the thumb on the tip of the little for one, the distal knuckle, palm side, for two, the pendistal knuckle for three, the base of the finger for four, the tip of the ring finger for five, etc. I won't bore you with finger-counting base forty-eight; I never do it anyway, except to show that it can be done.
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addict
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I use the chisanbop system to count on my fingers up to 99. I've seen demonstrations of children doing multiplication and division using it, but I haven't taken the time to learn it. Non-cartoon rabbits have 5 digits ( Watership Down's numbering system - 5 or greater = thousands (hrair) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two ). I assume that like other canines, foxes have 4 toes and a dew claw.
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Pooh-Bah
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I just take my shoes off if it gets above 10.
edited cos I started to think about this some more.
Actually that is a cool way to count but do you have different words for the numbers? (serious question) Base 10 actually has words for one thru twelve but betrays its baseness with thirteen (three +ten) and up. What do you call twelve +one in base twelve? The next major change in base 10 would be 20 (2x10). The equivalent whether written as twenty-four or 24 is by the notation/name linked back to base 10.
In order to work in base anything-other-than-ten do people use other names to keep it straight? Or does anyone other than Hal work in other bases?
Last edited by Zed; 03/11/08 12:40 AM.
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>Or does anyone other than Hal work in other bases?
people who work *with Hal use base two, eight, and sixteen.
two and eight are simplistic (base two : 1,10 and eight = 1-7,10)
base sixteen took rather more imagination : 1-9,A,B,C,D,E,F,10
I don't know about 'speaking' base twelve, it doesn't seem very practical.
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old hand
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>Or does anyone other than Hal work in other bases?
Did you mean H.A.L. 9000?
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old hand
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I don't know about 'speaking' base twelve, it doesn't seem very practical.
It ain't practical unless you got Six fingers, lima oscar lima. However hexadecimal has an older more universal appeal.
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It ain't practical unless you got Six fingers, lima oscar lima. However hexadecimal has an older more universal appeal.
When I'm finger-counting base twelve I use the thumb as the counter. It's done on the outside of the hand and starts with the thumb on the tip of the index finger for one, to the first knuckle for two to the second knuckle for three, to the tip of the middle finger for four, etc. I still don't do it very much. Naming would be simple enough if I did: 1 one 2 two 3 three 4 four 5 five 6 six 7 seven 8 eight 9 nine A ten B eleven 10 onety 11 onety-one 12 onety-two . . . A0 tenty A1 tenty-one . . . B0 eleventy B1 eleventy-one . . . BB eleventy-eleven . . . I'm more likely to count base sixteen, though. I do it whenever the local County Legislature has a vote in one of their meetings. It takes eight ayes to pass a measure, regardless of how many are attending the meeting and that comes out to reaching the tip of my ring finger. I use the right hand for ayes and the left hand for nays.
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Carpal Tunnel
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It ain't practical unless you got Six fingers
Many cultures move past counting on their fingers. The Sumerians (and later the Babylonians) and the Maya had non-decimal numeric systems The former used base-60 (sexagesimal) and the latter base-20 (vigesmal).
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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old hand
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What's the evidence that the Sumerians and Babylonians used base 60 for ordinary counting? Is that true or just conjecture based on things like their calendars etc?
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old hand
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Many cultures move past counting on their fingers.
The Huli of Papua New Guinea highlands still use not only there fingers but parts of there arm, chest and head (eyes, nose, ears) they use a base 15 system.
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What's the evidence that the Sumerians and Babylonians used base 60 for ordinary counting?
Good question. Since Sumerian and Akkadian are no longer spoken, we only have written records to go by, and that already preselects what kind of counting was getting done. (I'll rummage through some of my reference books and see what's to be seen.) Not sure if anybody knows how the common counting folk did it. One might investigate the words for numbers and seeing if any clues could be had from them.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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stranger
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The words were spoken by Albert Alligator, a character in the comic strip "Pogo". Sometimes the reference was to the counting methods and numbers used by Congress to keep track of US funds. Things haven't changed in 50, 60, 70 years.
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