[HN Gopher] Yan tan tethera pethera pimp - an old system for cou...
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Yan tan tethera pethera pimp - an old system for counting sheep
(2013)
Author : vector_spaces
Score : 63 points
Date : 2022-12-10 03:13 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stancarey.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stancarey.wordpress.com)
| dblack12705 wrote:
| This counting system is fascinating! I wrote an article about
| this as well:
|
| https://maximumeffort.substack.com/p/a-brief-history-of-dik
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Yours is more informative, thank you!
| version_five wrote:
| Thank you for sharing that, very interesting, especially the
| hickory dickory dock bit. I'm going to see if there is
| somewhere I can buy a poster of that sheep chart. Edit:
| apparently we can -
| https://www.beccahallillustration.co.uk/product-page/print-c...
| throwoutway wrote:
| You mark number 4 as Pethera, but in the image/poster it is
| Methera. Is there a discrepancy?
|
| Good post btw !
| bradrn wrote:
| There's lots and lots of different systems: https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Yan_tan_tethera#Systems_by_reg.... Some have
| _methera_ , some have _pethera_ , many have something else.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Shepherds (and ranchers) count moving things, so they stand at
| the gate and use fingers, winding up with groupings of 10s.
|
| Bakers count stationary things, so they like obvious groups of
| rectangles, and 3x4 is much nicer than 5x2, winding up with
| groupings of 12s.
|
| To this day hot dogs and buns are sold in incommensurate
| packages.
|
| (also, might 20s in numbering systems come about because 2x10 and
| 4x5 is a nice number for both ranchers and bakers?)
| zdragnar wrote:
| 12 is such a useful number given it has 2,3,4 and 6 as factors-
| lots of fairly simple mental math can get you pretty far.
|
| 20 is nice, but you could make the same argument for 30 (5x6).
| In both cases, there's too much overhead because you still have
| the useful 10 as a factor in any situation that doesn't need
| groups of rectangles.
|
| I don't know if this adds much to the discussion, other than
| perhaps there isn't really a need for ranchers and bakers to
| use the same factors or base counting system?
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I feel the need to point out that it's a long road from steer
| to hot dog, and you don't usually get them from a rancher.
| somrand0 wrote:
| wow, that's a very interesting perspective on the difference
| between 10 and 12 as numeral system bases.
|
| also, what a terrible state of affairs for obsessively-minded
| people. that we cannot even out buns and hotdogs.
| Phemist wrote:
| In my home country hot dogs are packaged by the 11. Prime
| numbers are the worst (haha, language joke intended)
| snthpy wrote:
| Does this help with getting kids to sleep at all?
| Schattenbaer wrote:
| Terry Pratchett refers to this counting system in the Tiffany
| Aching[1] books.
|
| Tiffany is called "jiggit" (the Yorkshire Dales word for twenty
| according to the article) by her grandmother as she is her
| granny's twentieth grandchild.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiffany_Aching
| masklinn wrote:
| For the wiki on the counting system:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_tan_tethera
|
| You can see jiggit in most of them (I assume that's the
| ancestral form and most ancestral ones, as the others differ
| quite a bit more from one another).
| travisgriggs wrote:
| HN should apply some sort of Pratchett badge whenever Pratchett
| gets mentioned. In lieu of, here's +50 karma to you sir.
| throwoutway wrote:
| I've been hesitant to read the discworld books? What makes
| them so good?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| They're fairly funny with interesting premises. I wouldn't
| be hesitant, they're fairly accessible for something which
| has such a cult following.
| [deleted]
| I_complete_me wrote:
| Here's Jake Thackray singing a song with this in it. Wonderful
| stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiXINuf5nbI.
|
| Edit: Just noticed this is referenced in the article. Sorry.
| rwmj wrote:
| Jake Thackray is always worth a reference!
| reedf1 wrote:
| I'm not sure I quite get it. Or at least the article doesn't make
| much sense of it.
|
| Is the idea that this is a helpful system because of it's
| rhyming? I've been trying to imagine how that would help counting
| sheep, but just can't come up with it.
| simplicio wrote:
| I think it helps to watch the video of Thackery saying them
| outloud at the end of the post. The rhyming gives counting off
| in groups of five and then 20 a kind of rhythm that "1,2,3.."
| lacks.
|
| I suspect if you have some sort of monotonous task that
| involves counting, the rhythm makes it easier to not loose your
| place or have your mind wander.
| raldi wrote:
| I think the point is to put yourself in the place of someone so
| bereft of technology and formal education and imagine how you
| would tally sheep. Also interesting how you can probably get
| children started earlier with lending a hand if you teach them
| a counting system based on singing. This is probably why we
| have the alphabet song.
|
| Edit: I also find it interesting that this is a system only for
| tallying, not arithmetic. As one of the articles in my ensuing
| dive pointed out, nobody says, "Miney + eeny = moe" or "Dik
| minus tethera equals..."
|
| Edit: And that the first two counting numbers being "something
| ending in nuh" and "something starting with tuh/duh" is an
| ancient idea, coming from long before Roman times and predating
| Latin.
| schoen wrote:
| It's kind of amazing how thorough this particular area of
| reconstruction is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-
| European_numerals
|
| (and the continued astonishment I get at Indo-European
| languages being native from Iceland all the way to India and
| Siberia -- maybe I should say "from Iceland to Ireland, Italy
| to Iran and India")
| Smaug123 wrote:
| It makes about as much sense as "eeny meeny miney mo" (or, for
| that matter, "one two three four"). It just sort of happened.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| I don't think there's a purpose per-se, it's just a small
| island of preserved archaic language.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I first heard of this from an Adrian Edmondson and The Bad
| Shepherds album: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Yan-Tyan-Tethera-
| Metheral-Shepherds...
|
| (Yes, it's that Adrian Edmondson from The Young Ones, Bottom etc)
| finnh wrote:
| The secret to counting sheep is easy: just count the legs and
| divide by four.
| Tagbert wrote:
| You might be thrown off by the variance. :)
|
| "Regina, the three legged lamb"
| https://www.buzzfeed.com/erinlarosa/this-adorable-three-legg...
| Cerium wrote:
| Count the legs, add three and divide by four to ensure partial
| sheep are properly counted by integer division.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| The Welsh one seems closest to Scots Gaelic, interestingly,
| because the two languages aren't all that similar.
|
| Aon, Dha, Tri, Ceithir, and when you get to 9 Naoi, and then
| Deich. And then you start aon deug, dha deug and so on. Fichead
| for 20 is much more like "jiggit" of Scots, Lakes, and Dales than
| ugain from Welsh, though.
| DFHippie wrote:
| For understanding the correspondence it's useful to know that
| Welsh "pump" sounds more or less (more in the south and less in
| the north) like "pimp". "Un" sounds like "een".
| timeon wrote:
| > Aon, Dha, Tri, Ceithir
|
| This resembles Slavic: jeden, dva, tri, stiri
| mannykannot wrote:
| I thought that perhaps both Slavic and Celtic languages form
| branches of the Indo-European family, and it seems that the
| geographic range of speakers of precursors of these languages
| overlapped in iron-age Europe.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-
| Slavic_borrowings#Slavic...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The Welsh one seems closest to Scots Gaelic, interestingly,
| because the two languages aren't all that similar.
|
| This is explained in the text:
|
| >> The original Celtic numerals were frequently forgotten, and
| their places supplied by words that were more or less founded
| on rhyme. And sometimes the Celtic words were supplemented by
| English ones. Owing to the corrupt forms that thus resulted,
| many of the formulae are of slight philological interest or
| value. That the original counting was in Celtic, chiefly
| appears from some forms that still remain. Thus the Welsh pump,
| five, explains the Eskdale pimp, and the Knaresborough pip, and
| others. The Welsh deg, ten, explains the forms dix, dec, dick,
| dik. But yan (whence yain, yaena, yah) is only a dialectal form
| of the English one. And tain, taena, tean are merely altered
| forms of two
|
| The Welsh one is closest to Scots Gaelic because Welsh is still
| more or less alive, so people didn't forget the number words.
| [deleted]
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