I Have A Puzzle, Good and Evil

 Sung to the tune of "A Lady" by Tally Hall:

I have a puzzle, good and evil,

Mewed in the base under siege again.

Listen alone to ancient linguas,

Oxymoronic in pain.

Note: not lore, just my Twitter username. ;-)

French Numbers

 Yeah, the joke is that they're stupid. Ha ha, very funny. But did you know that in Belgium and Switzerland there are actually individual words for 70, 80, and 90? Respectively, they're 'septante', 'huitante', and 'nonante'. Don't use them in France though, people will try to correct you. On the topic of 80, it actually used to be far more consistent. Some time, possibly around the Middle Ages, [I mean, it has Celtic origin, what do you want me to say?] any multiple of twenty up to 18 could be expressed as 'x twenties'. This led to a hospital intended for 300 knights to be called the 'Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts', literally translated as 'hospital of fifteen twenties'. Arguably more confusing is the Danish word for fifty; 'halvtreds'. Seemingly, this means 'half-three' but that doesn't make a lot of sense. So what's going on? Okay, well, this is actually a shortening of the older Danish word, 'halvtredsindstyve', which roughly translates to 'half three times twenty'. But... doing the math, that equals thirty. There's one more trick here. Since 'half' comes before 'three', it really means 'one half before three', or 'three minus one half'. Essentially, it's the same as the mathematical expression, '(3 - 1/2) * 20 = 50'. Which is true, but surely that's quite long-winded, right? If it helps, Old Danish used the vigesimal system, or base 20. That might explain the weird multiplication a bit. If it's any consolation, other number systems, like those used in Tongua or Lojban just have you say the digits in order. So '4034' in Lojban is just 'vonocivo'. I'll leave it here with another common joke: 42 in Lojban.

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-4751,00.html

https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/french-numbers-septante-huitante-octante-nonante-soixante-dix-quatre-vingts-quatre-vingt-dix.4205/

https://www.thelocal.fr/galleries/culture/french-words-you-will-never-hear-in-france/

https://www.wordsense.eu/halvtredsindstyve/

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B4pital_des_Quinze-Vingts

https://www.languagesandnumbers.com/how-to-count-in-danish/en/dan/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4bmZ1gRqCc

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233545931_Counting_in_Tongan_The_Traditional_Number_Systems_and_Their_Cognitive_Implications

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-unefmAo9k

January 2022 Update

 I haven't been here in a while. More than that, I haven't been here posting material that hasn't been recycled from an old school assignment. So the next question is, "What's up with that?" And I can tell you.

I've been journalling quite a bit more recently.

Well, in the past few months.

Well, since August of 2021. I've been dealing with a whole lot of things that don't really seem like they should be on a public blog. But I'm back now, and I've come up with a list of topics and revisions that will happen here in the near future.

Allow me to indulge here:

• Dictionary update! 70+ new words will be added, and I'll try to revisit it monthly (but no promises)
• No lore stuff here! In the past, I've seeded in some entries that can be considered lore for the non-chronological storyline I've been telling for the last five years. No more of that. If you want to keep up-to-date on that, refer to the next bullet point.
• New stuff on the storefront! Yes, I'm currently compiling another bunch of poems I've written for the second volume of "I Don't Know". I'll also include some writings I'm particularly proud of, including the Angry Birds physics report, among others. And as always, every item there is entirely free!
• Music! I used to be far more vigilant about keeping my Twitter account secret. Or that fact I even have one. Yes, I have a Twitter account. Yes, I keep that more updated than this blog as of late. No, that really doesn't mean much. I post there when I want to talk about art, music, and cosplay in an anonymous way. If you really want to find it, I'll post a puzzle on here later [probably in February] to give some hints. In the meantime, I'll try to talk about music here, too.
• Rabbit hole discussions! Yeah, I'm still working on a name. Basically, it's a post wherein I indulge in a topic far beyond what seems socially acceptable. It'll be rambly, unstructured, and basically all over the place. It's basically a vessel for me to talk about random things I find interesting. I'm not sure what's in it for you, but hopefully you take from it some interesting knowledge. Maybe it'll help in a trivia competition someday, I don't know!

So those are the updates! Coming soon to this blog. If you take issue with anything in this post, or anything I say in any post, the comments are always open!