August 12, 2005

• enumerate their backs, jack divide their legs by four, tibor count up the fleece, reese ... (nice link, thanks)
• I remember hearing this as a lad, though slightly garbled by the looks of the list here (and I grew up in a different part of the North that was cattle country anyhow). I was lead to believe it was a survival from Old Norse or something. What say you, Languagehat? You'd suspect it's likely part of some scheme for those tight-fisted Dales farmers to cheat someone or other, as that's what they live for.
• Ewe have provided a wonderful link, Mr. Hat. Me likes.
• Sath-erum bananas.
• Wensleydale! Yes? Oh! I thought you were talkikng to me sir. That's my name. Mr. Wensleydale. And a license for my pet sheep, Eric, as well
• Ewe have provided a wonderful link, Mr. Hat. It's one-two-ful!
• ...Bumfit?...Pumpudding?... Marvelous. Perhaps a Dickensian law firm? Long ago, remember being told by our gardener in Oxford, who knew a very similar sounding set of these words, that this was how the Welsh counted. But then, in Nova Scotia, there was one that began Ickera pickera cooterra corn... which some people ascribed to the Micmacs.
• I don't think I've ever seen a thetrical/opera production for adults that included a chorus of sheep.
• You'd suspect it's likely part of some scheme for those tight-fisted Dales farmers to cheat someone or other, as that's what they live for. Well, yeah... I thought the whole point of having a shepherds-only counting system like this was to insure the tax collectors (and also possibly the neighbours) couldn't overhear how many sheep you had? (mind you, my authority for this is Terry Pratchett, so I could be wrong.) In any case, great link languagehat!
• ensure. Bugger.
• I've always preferred Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich man Poor man Begger man Thief (or the Le Carré variation)
• Do you know the rest of the sequence to ten, Bees? I remember 4th grade, being bemused in history at school over the mention of the Micmacs--it was such a cool word to say. Micmacs knick-knacks TicTacs paddy-wacks Melmac fun for your tongue
• I was lead to believe it was a survival from Old Norse or something Actually, it's from Welsh (or something very similar), where the first five numbers are un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump.
• Coming from the southwest of England, I'd always thought there were only four numbers for sheep - "One", "Two", "A few" (pronounced "foo") and "A fair few". I have always assumed the aim was to establish plausible deniability. One sheep is undeniable. Two is hard to argue. "A few" is a trailerful - anywhere from three to, well, a few. A "fair few" is more than you can fit in a trailer. Sometimes, a field full of sheep is a few. Sometimes it's a fair few. Depends who's asking. Depends on the field. Critically, it's never less than the number you're claiming subsidy for. The Eurocrats are using satellite imagery to verify arable acreage. Try that with sheep. In a single millisecond-long pass of your spiffy space-borne CCD, two white sheep will look brown, one brown sheep will look green, three sickly ones will die, and six lambs will be born. Four of these will be orphaned when their mothers die of some weird sheep-specific pathogen that they've just invented to upset your vet with. One of the lambs will be adopted by a ewe whose lambs have died, two will need hand rearing (one of which will die), and the other will be lunch for a fox. If you're a sheep farmer, that's a good day. With fleeces currently fetching the fifth root of fuckall, and lamb meat (NOOOOO-We don't kill baby lambs - just adolescent ones) selling for about the price of grass, it's a very good day (you're still getting subsidy for the same number....)
• Wow. Sorry. That was a rant. Apologies. Back to linguistics: These counting schemes appear to be base 10. Also, several seem to use words for "ten" that may originate in Latin. Could their origins reach back that far? Ou est il l'influence du Français? Also, are there any languages with numbers not based on ten? I know that some isolated groups have seemingly simple numerical systems. But is there a language with, say, base 12?
• Chaz, I believe the Mayans used a base 20 numerical system. And for a long time, English currency used a base 12 system (20 shillings to a pound, but 12 pence to a shilling, hence 240 pence to a pound).
• Could their origins reach back that far? Predates Latin. They count one through ten, and then ten plus one through ten plus five, and then fifteen plus one through fifteen plus five. As if they first loaded the fingers of both hands, and then the toes of one foot, and finally the toes of the other. I've never seen fifteen used as a stopping point like that.
• Chaz, that was a great rant. Well done.
• goetter, I kind of wish you hadn't linked to that Wikipedia page. It's so badly done (no accents, mistaken forms, etc.) that I'm going to have to go through and clean it up a bit, though I'll try to resist the temptation to look up every single form. Why do people write such sloppy articles? And yeah, great rant, Chaz!
• Wow, Chaz. That was great. You really know your sheep! You've the proof for my theory that sheep are wooly cloven-footed disasters waiting to happen.