Re: Ancient number-encoding formats...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Zach,

> One thing that that site doesn't take into account is that the double
> letters in Hebrew (The Finals), such as Kap (Kaph) - 20, Mim (Mem) - 40,
> Noon (Nun) - 50,  Pe - 80, and Sadhe (Tzaddi) - 90,  have two different
> numerical values depending on their location in the word you're checking.
> If they are the final letter in the word, their value is actually higher
> Kap - 500, Mem - 600, Nun - 700, Pe - 800, Tzaddi - 900.
> This only happens when they're at the end of the word.  Check out this link
> for more info
> http://kabbalah-web.org/engkab/zohar/REDEMPTION.htm

Thanks for the link - but now I'm even more confused than before (though I 
guess that's Kabbalistic writing all over).

What I understand from the page is: the five double letters each have two 
possible ways of being written down, a simple (child) one (the 10s version) 
and a complex (adult) one (the 100s version).

So: both versions are pronounced the same, but are written differently.

This gives 22 letters + 5 double letters (extra versions) = 27 different 
letters = 3 * 9, enough to handle 1..9, 10..90, and 100..900.

Also: to represent 1000, you use Aleph (as if the number were 1), but 
instead pronounce it "Eleph" rather than "Aleph".

So: both versions are written the same, but are pronounced differently. :-)

No wonder people loved Arabic numbers so much. :-)

Cheers, ....Nick Pelling....