Numerical system for my specbio project
I decided to make them their own numerical system, using base-12 because of the way that they count on their fingers. (see video)
Circles are joints, pinky is n/a as they only have 4 digits including thumb
They use their thumb to count the joints of their top 3 fingers, on both hands, resulting in 12! (of course theres other methods they can use, but this is THE most common.)
It works similarly to arabic numerals, the only main difference being the base of course and an extra character, the empty space .. it is used in place of 0 when contained within a bigger number. The zero symbol is only used when the zero is by itself.
There is also a slightly simplified version of the numbers, that are still recognized as correct but less professional. They're for jotting things down quickly
The symbols might feel slightly unnatural for you to write, and it's because it's a little more adapted for their majority leftie population
All these symbols are taken from the way the people of Pinat started to write their numbers thousands of years ago (this set of numerals is probably only a couple hundred years old though). They were originally all straight lines and sharp angles because they would write by chiseling away hard stone, and so straight lines were a whole lot easier to carve than curves but as it spread some of the numerals rounded out
Converting arabic numerals to pinatian is honestly really difficult lol so I have no idea how to even explain!! and god forbid you ask me to do any equation with the system :p
But think of it like this:
100
The 1 here represents 1×10×10, because of the two units in front of it. Pinatian uses the same concept, but you multiply by 12. If you wish to understand better I reccomend looking into base-12 numerical systems (its a very fun topic aswell so either way check out some alternative numerical systems :3)
I wanted just enough to be able to make their conlang in the future, so there it is! :3
buh bye!
