Creeping Sharia?

The next Super Bowl will use Arabic numerals. I blame Obama. And the letter L.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap2000000355943/article/nfl-wont-use-roman-numera...

I think most Americans have trouble with Roman numerals. We learned about them in fifth or sixth grade and rarely used them after that. (They are also very tricky if you are multiplying or dividing.) Maybe we should go metric?

I once paused for a long time over a Roman numeral in a Latin text in front of a prof of mine. I broke down and told him I had trouble reading them off the bat. He told me he did too.

>3 timspalding:. I have trouble reading anything written on a bat.

"Render unto Caesar" the numerals "that are Caesar's!"?...

Although the real origins of zero, necessary for a place-value numbering system, are probably impossible to accurately trace today, there seems to be good evidence that the idea originated among the Hindus.

So they're Hindu-Arabic numerals. Giving all the credit to the Arabs just shows the influence of creeping Sharia.

>3 timspalding: I do fine converting Roman numerals to Arabic ones. What I never mastered was declaring Roman numerals in Latin numbers when reading a Latin text aloud...

(When I saw The Passion of the Christ in the theater, the way I distracted myself from the brutality of the scourging was by paying attention to the centurion counting out the lashes in Latin.)

A "hard" lesson hm...

But the game will take place in the stadium of the San Francisco XLIXers.

Is ILers wrong?

>10 quicksiva: Yeah -- Roman numerals do have at least a limited sense of place value, insofar as the signification-by-subtraction method (i.e. IX = X-I, or XC = C-X) only works for values related to one another by one order of magnitude. That is, you can only use it with I's in relation to V's and X's, and not in relation to any values higher than 10 times I (10). Similarly, you can only use the subtraction method with X's in relation to L's and C's, and not in relation to any values higher than 10 times X (100).

Well, according to whom? Are you sure the Romans did it that way?

It seems to me that Roman numerals are only used in a fairly limited range of situations. So we (in UK) expect our next king to Charles III not Charles 3 (assuming he chooses 'Charles' as his regnal name) and Bible scholars refer to the Septuagint as LXX not 70. I don't see that it creates problems for the proverbial 'man on the street" or the "man on the London omnibus" who waits patiently for the number 32 (not XXXII).

When the play The Madness of King George III was turned into a movie, it was renamed The Madness of King George for fear that people would think it was a sequel.

>12 timspalding: I'm not sure if there are extant written rules on the Roman's numeral calculation (though I'm quite certain such rules were written by the Romans); but extrapolating from the inscripitional evidence, it is as I described it, at least for the Romans.

(The use of the signification by subtraction method was less common in the Middle Ages; more common was simply to count up, e.g. VII, VIII, VIIII, X, etc.).

>15 nathanielcampbell:

Yeah, I need to look into it. I'm sure I've seen the Medieval method you describe on much earlier inscriptions.

Vermont Proposes Official Latin Motto, Wingnuts Tell Vermont To Go Back To Mexico (Wonkette)

Apparently, at the suggestion of a bright 8th-grader, a Republican Vermont Senator proposed that Vermont adopt a motto in Latin (because it doesn't have one): "Stella quartadecima fulgeat."

In response, the Senator has been bombarded by people upset that he's pandering to illegal immigrants (you know, the "Latins"). This is 'Murica, where we speakie the English (though the comments are rife with errors).

O tempora, o mores!

>17 nathanielcampbell:

I saw that, and loved it.

Vermont should totally have a French motto, though. Something like "Green Mountain." :)

>17 nathanielcampbell: and a lot of those upset people are probably some of the same ones who went bugfuck last year over the multi-lingual coke ad.

We need Cokes that's say "have a Coke with Maximian," etc.

Old schoolboy joke: Why did President Charles de Gaulle have Roman numerals on his cap? Because he'd have looked pretty silly with French letters.

Or maybe you have to be British of a certain generation to appreciate that one?

Or australian. I wonder if the french slang for the same item is still "capote anglaise".
I have heard "budgie burqa" as local slang for it - possibly a backformation from budgie smuggler?

>22 binders: I love budgie burqa. The Australians are so creative and imaginative when it comes to this sort of thing.

We're a bit less imaginative - frenchies, johnnies, dunkies, blobs, rubbers, "Something for the weekend, sir?"...

Two peoples divided by a common language, as Churchill is supposed to have said.

The British teacher goes to teach in America, and, on her first day, notices that there are no blackboard erasers, and asks the class, "Do you know where the rubbers are?"

The American teacher goes to Britain, and on her first day in class says, "Gee, if I'da known it was gonna be so doggone cold, I'da worn some pants."

Uncontrollable mirth in both classes.

>24 Doug1943: A US friend told me that many years ago she walked into a hairdresser's salon in London and asked for a shag...

See you and raise you one. No, not one, but two:

"He was my fag at Eton."

and

A lady gets into a taxi in Boston, and asks the driver, "My good man, do you know where I can get scrod ?" He replies, "Geez, that's the first time I've ever heard anyone actually use the pluperfect tense."

>26 Doug1943:

My mom always tell that as:

"I've heard it in the past. I've heard it in the future. But I've never heard it in the pluperfect."

Actually, I didn't know what the pluperfect tense was, until I encountered that joke. Now I'm trying to think of an equivalent for the ablative absolute.