From: Peter Constable (petercon@microsoft.com)
Date: Fri Nov 28 2003 - 13:38:46 EST
> 26 Update properties for Ethiopic and Tamil non-decimal digits
> 2003.01.27 Decimal numbers are those using in decimal-radix number
> systems. In particular, the sequence of the ONE character followed by
the
> TWO character is interpreted as having the value of twelve. We have
gotten
> feedback that this is the not the case for Ethiopic or Tamil. Details
are
> on the public issues page.
Comments I've submitted:
PRI#26: It is my understanding that Ethiopic numerals do not use a
decimal radix.
Most sources describing Ethiopic script will list the characters
representing tens, 100 and 10000. The existence of these characters,
which are not combinations made from sequences of digits for 0 - 9,
already indicates that this is not a decimal-radix system.
Traditionally, each syllabic character has a numeric value associated.
This is described on page 8 of
http://www.intelligirldesign.com/paper_gabriella.pdf, which shows Arabic
decimal values, and
http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/Numeric.html,
which shows traditional Ethiopic numerals. By comparison of these two
documents, one can get an idea of how the numbers work.
The following are some other useful discussions of Ethiopic numbering:
http://www.abyssiniacybergateway.net/fidel/sera-faq_4.html
http://www.ethiopic.com/ethiopic/numerals.pdf
The last of these proposes the addition of a digit 0 in order to allow
decimal-radix numbers in Ethiopic. I have no idea whether this has
caught on at all or not, but it is not the traditional system.
Peter
Peter Constable
Globalization Infrastructure and Font Technologies
Microsoft Windows Division
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