#speaking hexadecimal

[mentalisttraceur]

Speaking Hexadecimal

Fluently and Unambiguously

I previously proposed a way of saying hexadecimal numbers clearly and efficiently in English, but that was only good for situations where it was otherwise unambiguous that the numbers were in base-16, and it still had some room for getting "wires crossed" with base-10. Now I finally have a proposal I'm satisfied with to finish the job:

We first add distinct words for the six extra "digits":

A is alf, B is brav, C is char, D is delt, E is eck, and F is fost. These are based on the pronunciation of the first six NATO phonetic alphabet words: "alpha", "bravo", "charlie", "delta", "echo", and "foxtrot", except that: we simplify "foxt" to "fost" to make it easier to say, we change the spelling of "alph" to make it more accessible to people not familiar with English's "ph", and the spelling of "eck" makes it obvious that it's a K sound, not a CH sound.

Then we replace "-ty" with "-tex". "-tex" is meant to be evocative of "hex", but the "t" fits the pattern of English number words better:

So 20 in hexadecimal is twentex, not "twenty". 21 is twentex-one, 22 is twentex-two, and so on. 2A is twentex-alf, 2B is twentex-brav, and so on. 30 is thirtex, 31 is thirtex-one, [...], 3A is thirtex-alf, and so on. Fortex, fiftex, sixtex, seventex, eightex, ninetex, alftex, bravtex, chartex, deltex, ecktex, and fostex.

English has special words for 10-19, but we can just use the same regular pattern in hexadecimal for 10-1F as for 20-FF. So 10 is ontex. It's "ontex" and not "onetex" to match the speed and distinctiveness that we get with twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty having slightly different pronunciations and spellings versus two, three, four, and five. 11 is ontex-one, 12 is ontex-two, 13 is ontex-three, and so on.

100 is "hunhex". This continues the mnemonic pattern - English number word, with a hexadecimal-hinting ending. 101 is "one hunhex and one," or just "hunhex and one" for short, just like we say decimal hundreds. 201 is "two hunhex and one", 2D4 is "two hunhex and deltex-four", and so on, all the way up to FFF - "fost hunhex and fostex-fost".

Incidentally, the modern English quirk of saying a number like 2463 as "twenty-four (hundred), sixty-three" instead of "two-thousand, four-hundred, and sixty-three" works really well for hexadecimal numbers: for example, 1AD4 is often written as 1A D4, and can be read as "ontex-alf (hunhex), deltex-four".

In fact, unlike decimal, in hexadecimal it is far more natural and useful, especially given modern technology, to do groups of two. So we don't even bother with another irregular word like "thousand" - instead, we just go directly to using the same Latin prefixes that large numbers in English use (billion, trillion, quadrillion, and so on), for multiples of two more hex digits:

So 10000 is a bihex, 1000000 is a trihex, 100000000 is a quadrihex, 10000000000 is a quintihex, 1000000000000 is a sextihex, 100000000000000 is a septihex, 10000000000000000 is an octohex, and so on. Technical people will appreciate that we're basically counting bytes here, and that a hunhex is one larger than the maximum value in a 1-byte unsigned integer - ditto bihex for 2 bytes, quadrihex for 4 bytes, octohex for 8 bytes, and so on.

[mentalisttraceur]

Speaking Hexadecimal

If you’ve ever tried to get fluent at thinking in hexadecimal, you have found that it requires language-free thought to not trip up over the associations we have with number words.

Is A “ten” or “A”? Is 10 “sixteen” or “ten”? What’s 16 then? Is how you say 1A clearly distinguishable from how you say 18? A0 and 80?

It is best to first get comfortable with cognition where number words bind to digits, not values - so “twenty” is always whichever number is represented by “2” followed by “0” in the current base, not always the same number.

But then it really helps to be able to speak it, and in particular speak it in a way that flows well, reduces the odds of our minds association-hopping onto the wrong numbers, and is audibly unambiguous.

And I think I finally figured out some nice number words derived from the NATO Phonetic Alphabet (the globally international standard used in air traffic and many other endeavors for saying letters). We start with the chopped off first part of each letter word:

A is alf, B is brav, C is char, D is delt, E is eck, and F is foxt.

1A is alfteen, 1B is bravteen, 1C is charteen, 1D is delteen, 1E is eckteen, and 1F is foxteen. A0 is alphty, B0 is bravty, C0 is charty, D0 is delty, E0 is eckty, and F0 is foxty.

2A is twenty-alf, 2B is twenty-brav, 2C is twenty-char, 2D is twenty-delt, 2E is twenty-eck and 2F is twenty-foxt. And so on.

Try them out for a while, if you deal with hexadecimal enough to want this solved. They have the same rhythm, pattern, and “flow” as all the other English number words, while sounding unambiguous and distinct.

[mentalisttraceur]

In a perfect world, saying hexadecimal numbers would be done with an entirely new set of sixteen base number words.

That way the ambiguity and strongly ingrained meanings of the pre-existing number words like "ten" never even come up.

If you are willing to go that far, I recommend learning the Lojban number words instead, because you probably have no prior mental association with them, and they go up to sixteen.

Written English-like, they are something like: noh (0), pa (1), reh (2), shee (3), voh (4), mu (5), ha (6), zeh (7), bee (8), soh (9), dau (A), fei (B), guy (C), zhau (D), rei (E), and vai (F).

(You can learn how to read and pronounce Lojban letters and the "native" Lojban spellings in like an hour, but the above are more English-friendly.)

Or just make up your own, but this reveals the problems more vividly: standards, even defacto ones, matter. Make up a new thing that is too far removed from any old thing and it doesn't scale.

How we say our numbers - including all the little subtle patterns that add up to what sounds "number-like" to us, is one such defacto standard.

It's a standard encoded into every English speaking mind, give or take some variation in dialect and education.

I guarantee you, you could take a motivated person - one who has just vividly personally experienced the insufficient language for talking or thinking about or in hexadecimal - and give them a crash course in "speaking hexadecimal" with the material I just gave you within a few minutes.

A minute to map "alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, echo, foxo" to the unnamed hexits (that's like digits, but in hex) and then another couple minutes of just organically using the numbers while moving on with the problem.

By the time you've had occasion to say "so alphty-one plus nineteen is bravty-alph", their brain will have started picking up on the vague feel, and noticing all the ways that it pattern-matches the vague feel of normal numbers, and having little mini epiphany blips as it noticing how these superficially arbitrary inconsistencies in in each variant of these new base words are actually helping the word fit in the bigger established pattern of spoken numbers.

Or not I could be totally wrong - I might be overestimating people again, and I just came up with this thing and haven't had any occasion to field-test it because I'm the only person I know who cares to train their mind in ways that makes this matter.

But all of my intuition is resonating that this is onto something good.

[mentalisttraceur]

Speaking hexadecimal spelling update: alph -> alf; ech -> eck.

After reviewing it with fresh eyes after some time, I have decided that I'd rather have spelling which is phonetically obvious than spelling which has a simple derivation from the spelling of the NATO phonetic alphabet words that it was inspired by.

[mentalisttraceur]

Finally added the speaking hexadecimal post (which I also cleared up a bit) to the non-terminology masterpost.

Arguably it fits more under the terminology masterpost, since I am defining the hexadecimal number words. But it feels to me like it doesn't belong there because it's not really naming or defining a concept, it's just giving more convenient language to a very niche math-y and computer-y use case.