ChatterBank0 min ago
in roman numerals the number 4 is represented as iv; why then, on a clockface or watch dial the number 4 is represented as iiii ?
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09:34 Sun 20th Sep 2009
Although I was quite taken by the explanation that it was first done by the Romans to avoid using Jupiter's name, I discovered that the very earliest mechanical clocks were not invented until the thirteenth century. By this time, the Romans were a spent force.......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock
I like the simple answer that it's done for symetry.
I was gobsmacked to learn (as a Londoner by birth, and regular visitor) that Big Ben has not followed the tradition. In fact, I didn't believe it! so I checked:
http://www.iesphotography.co.uk/london/slides/big%20ben%20face.html
Great question, one I have always wondered about myself........ Thanks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock
I like the simple answer that it's done for symetry.
I was gobsmacked to learn (as a Londoner by birth, and regular visitor) that Big Ben has not followed the tradition. In fact, I didn't believe it! so I checked:
http://www.iesphotography.co.uk/london/slides/big%20ben%20face.html
Great question, one I have always wondered about myself........ Thanks
So, now you have me wondering who it was who first divided the day into 24 hours, and did the Romans even have a concept of 12hours?
Here is what I found:
Egyptian astronomers divided the night hours into 12 distinct sets of star patterns, which emerged over the horizon at roughly hour-long intervals. They divided the day into 12 hours to match, and because they lived near the equator, the days and nights were of roughly equal length throughout the year.
Throughout the rest of the world, the 12 "hours" of the day and night were flexible depending upon the season. It wasn't until the 13th century A.D. that an Arab scientist named Abul-Hassan suggested the idea of clearly defined hours.
It's also worth noting that the number 12 is special in many cultures. For example, Egyptians counted in base 12. Dividing the day into two sets of 12 was a simple and elegant way of condensing the annual calendar into a day.
Here is what I found:
Egyptian astronomers divided the night hours into 12 distinct sets of star patterns, which emerged over the horizon at roughly hour-long intervals. They divided the day into 12 hours to match, and because they lived near the equator, the days and nights were of roughly equal length throughout the year.
Throughout the rest of the world, the 12 "hours" of the day and night were flexible depending upon the season. It wasn't until the 13th century A.D. that an Arab scientist named Abul-Hassan suggested the idea of clearly defined hours.
It's also worth noting that the number 12 is special in many cultures. For example, Egyptians counted in base 12. Dividing the day into two sets of 12 was a simple and elegant way of condensing the annual calendar into a day.
The Romans themselves originally wrote 4 as IIII and only later wrote it as IV. The standard practice on clocks is for symmetry, to balance the VIII, the V of which is written with one thick and one very thin stroke. You'll find Roman inscriptions which use the old-fashioned IIII too. That was done, in all probability, because it was easier to carve IIII than IV without making a mistake, a slip, which would ruin the whole carved block of inscription! (For the same reason, the carvers were not fond of the letter J, preferring I instead, though classical script used J in such names as Juppiter [Jupiter] and many other words).
I think possibly the simplest answer is that to Romans and to later users of Roman numerals, the IIII and IV were interchangeable. However, it is easier to pick up the IV correctly at first reading. This should not be an issue on public clock faces as the position of the numeral gives the clue (like Tambo's diamond!). So the only deteminants must be fashion at the time the clock was made, the preference of whoever paid for it and the training of the clockmaker.
Yes fred, I knew IIII and IV (and VIIII and IX) had always both been around, and even that if anything IIII was more common, but where did you actually find evidence that IV was later? And was IX too?
But where on earth did you get the idea that classical script used J in such names as Juppiter [Jupiter] and many other words? The letter was not even invented till comparatively recently, and not distinct from I till more recently still!
But where on earth did you get the idea that classical script used J in such names as Juppiter [Jupiter] and many other words? The letter was not even invented till comparatively recently, and not distinct from I till more recently still!
Mallam, it's a common mistake to believe that there was no J in Latin. J is not a recent invention.People think there was no J because nowadays, to make life easier for students, teaching texts in Latin use only I. The ancients used J.
Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary has twelve pages of minute print devoted to the hundreds of words beginning with J. These include the old schoolboys' favourite 'jam' as in their jokey Latin 'text' beginning 'Caesar adsum jam forte' (Caesar had some jam for tea).It does, of course, occur within words too 'ejecto' being a common example.
In their preface to the entries for 'J' Lewis and Short devote some space to its history and use and the thoughts of ancient Roman grammarians .That's a long piece, but it may suffice to say, as they do,that "many e.g. Cicero " used double J in some words, writing e.g. ejjus.
Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary has twelve pages of minute print devoted to the hundreds of words beginning with J. These include the old schoolboys' favourite 'jam' as in their jokey Latin 'text' beginning 'Caesar adsum jam forte' (Caesar had some jam for tea).It does, of course, occur within words too 'ejecto' being a common example.
In their preface to the entries for 'J' Lewis and Short devote some space to its history and use and the thoughts of ancient Roman grammarians .That's a long piece, but it may suffice to say, as they do,that "many e.g. Cicero " used double J in some words, writing e.g. ejjus.
As to IIII being earlier than IV, mallam, your asking for evidence is beyond my present library at home and, it seems, the net. 'IV' is used in the classical texts I have but that's not to say that a comparative view of ancient texts wouldn't show IV written earlier than IIII. However, we may look to why the Romans used I and V. If you put your hands flat on the table, there's an answer 'to hand'. Each finger forms an I. The findex finger and thumb form a V. From the left that reads I, II, III, IIII and V. Looking to the right hand we start with the V of thumb and forefinger, and read V, VI, VII ,VIII and VIIII. If we keep our hands flat and have the thumbs overlapping, the thumbs form X. Reading to the right we have X, XI, XII, XIII, XIIII. It may not escape notice that to the left of the X we have IIIIIX, IIIX, IIX, IX and then X.
Now, the question is, would an Ancient Roman think first of writing by copying his fingers up to IIII on his left hand alone and only later realise that he could have written IV , using his index finger and the adjacent V ? I think he would have thought of that IV only after he thought of the obvious way. Having hit upon that, someone would see that the same device could be used for VIIII by using the forefinger by the X, which was formed by the thumbs, and putting IX.
Scribes would not only save ink and a little time by writing IV but IV is readily recognised, whereas IIII might be misread for III. In fact, Roman scribes sometimes wrote the last I in a series as j (thus: iij for iii), to make the text clearer.
We know that IIII and IV did coexist, as said before. Whoever wrote the wikipedia entry 'Roman numerals' has a theory about IIII and IV. They say that the Romans put IIII because they put IV in IVPPITER for Jupiter, the chief god.That would explain inscriptions having IIII though IIII does occur a lot on inscriptions and not just when Jupiter figures LOL. It would make more sense to note that U was carved as
Now, the question is, would an Ancient Roman think first of writing by copying his fingers up to IIII on his left hand alone and only later realise that he could have written IV , using his index finger and the adjacent V ? I think he would have thought of that IV only after he thought of the obvious way. Having hit upon that, someone would see that the same device could be used for VIIII by using the forefinger by the X, which was formed by the thumbs, and putting IX.
Scribes would not only save ink and a little time by writing IV but IV is readily recognised, whereas IIII might be misread for III. In fact, Roman scribes sometimes wrote the last I in a series as j (thus: iij for iii), to make the text clearer.
We know that IIII and IV did coexist, as said before. Whoever wrote the wikipedia entry 'Roman numerals' has a theory about IIII and IV. They say that the Romans put IIII because they put IV in IVPPITER for Jupiter, the chief god.That would explain inscriptions having IIII though IIII does occur a lot on inscriptions and not just when Jupiter figures LOL. It would make more sense to note that U was carved as
Well fred, you have raised some v interesting points, but I will respond to all your points in the order you have made them:
"it's a common mistake to believe that there was no J in Latin"
It's an extraordinarily UNcommon mistake to believe that there WAS one!
"People think there was no J because nowadays, to make life easier for students, teaching texts in Latin use only I."
Then why do they use both u and v instead of only v? Because it would make life more difficult, not easier! It does not make life quite so difficult to use only i, but to be consistent they should have continued the practice they did use to make life easier for students once the letter j was not only invented, but distinguished from i, as I said above, namely to use i for the vowel and j for the semivowel, parallel to u for the vowel and v for the semivowel (the w sound) which the reconstructed pronunciation of Latin requires. The present situation has people just about managing to pronounce i as vowel or semivowel (the y sound) in the right places (with exceptions by any reckoning, like io, 'yippee' as in 'And io io io io, by priest and people sungen'), but pronouncing v as in English French Italian Portuguese etc. Its only advantage (and possible motivation) is that it stops people pronouncing iam as the 'jam' in 'Caesar had some jam for tea'. (The schoolboy garble only worked as long as in comparatively recent times the convention for the contemporary printings of Latin texts was to spell iam 'jam', which, I stress, was only possible once the letter j was not only invented, but distinguished from i. But this particular perversion of Classical Latin spelling was stopped long before either of us learnt Latin. No modern printings of Latin texts do that. Neither do any modern Latin dictionaries.)
"The ancients used J."
They did not.
"Lewis and Short's Latin
"it's a common mistake to believe that there was no J in Latin"
It's an extraordinarily UNcommon mistake to believe that there WAS one!
"People think there was no J because nowadays, to make life easier for students, teaching texts in Latin use only I."
Then why do they use both u and v instead of only v? Because it would make life more difficult, not easier! It does not make life quite so difficult to use only i, but to be consistent they should have continued the practice they did use to make life easier for students once the letter j was not only invented, but distinguished from i, as I said above, namely to use i for the vowel and j for the semivowel, parallel to u for the vowel and v for the semivowel (the w sound) which the reconstructed pronunciation of Latin requires. The present situation has people just about managing to pronounce i as vowel or semivowel (the y sound) in the right places (with exceptions by any reckoning, like io, 'yippee' as in 'And io io io io, by priest and people sungen'), but pronouncing v as in English French Italian Portuguese etc. Its only advantage (and possible motivation) is that it stops people pronouncing iam as the 'jam' in 'Caesar had some jam for tea'. (The schoolboy garble only worked as long as in comparatively recent times the convention for the contemporary printings of Latin texts was to spell iam 'jam', which, I stress, was only possible once the letter j was not only invented, but distinguished from i. But this particular perversion of Classical Latin spelling was stopped long before either of us learnt Latin. No modern printings of Latin texts do that. Neither do any modern Latin dictionaries.)
"The ancients used J."
They did not.
"Lewis and Short's Latin
"Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary has twelve pages of minute print devoted to the hundreds of words beginning with J...."
How astonishing that you should think either that that means the ancients used it, or that anyone who has ever used L&S or any other Latin dictionary would need telling that traditionally dictionaries and other publications did use it.
Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary is an old publication, but not old enough (or recent enough) not to use the relatively recent and short-lived wrongheaded convention of distinguishing i from j, thinking THAT was what would make life easier for students!
"It does, of course, occur within words too 'ejecto' being a common example."
How could it not? The semivocalic value so belatedly assigned to it occurs intervocalically too! And DISAPPEARS intervocalically too, as it happens! For 'ejecto' is a decidedly unfortunate example for your purposes: it is an iterative of 'ejicio', as you would think L&S might spell it. But look it up and you will see that they do not have it under that spelling, but refer you to eicio: Ä“-ÄcÄo (or ejicio ).
The reason for this is that the Classical Latin spellings were EICIO and EIICIO, and the latter reflected the etymology (iicio being the theoretical combinatory form of iacio) rather than the pronunciation. This was obviously because as in many languages the combination yi as in yippee was a phonetic impossibility. Look in L&S again and you will not find any words beginning with ji! But it was also because the etymological spelling was misleading when the first element ended in a consonant, as in ab-iicio, ad-iicio, ob-iicio, etc. Think of abiit adiit and obiit, where the first i never was and never could or can be written j or pronounced semivocalically, and for both etymological and phonetic reasons each i is pronounced separately.
"In their preface to
How astonishing that you should think either that that means the ancients used it, or that anyone who has ever used L&S or any other Latin dictionary would need telling that traditionally dictionaries and other publications did use it.
Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary is an old publication, but not old enough (or recent enough) not to use the relatively recent and short-lived wrongheaded convention of distinguishing i from j, thinking THAT was what would make life easier for students!
"It does, of course, occur within words too 'ejecto' being a common example."
How could it not? The semivocalic value so belatedly assigned to it occurs intervocalically too! And DISAPPEARS intervocalically too, as it happens! For 'ejecto' is a decidedly unfortunate example for your purposes: it is an iterative of 'ejicio', as you would think L&S might spell it. But look it up and you will see that they do not have it under that spelling, but refer you to eicio: Ä“-ÄcÄo (or ejicio ).
The reason for this is that the Classical Latin spellings were EICIO and EIICIO, and the latter reflected the etymology (iicio being the theoretical combinatory form of iacio) rather than the pronunciation. This was obviously because as in many languages the combination yi as in yippee was a phonetic impossibility. Look in L&S again and you will not find any words beginning with ji! But it was also because the etymological spelling was misleading when the first element ended in a consonant, as in ab-iicio, ad-iicio, ob-iicio, etc. Think of abiit adiit and obiit, where the first i never was and never could or can be written j or pronounced semivocalically, and for both etymological and phonetic reasons each i is pronounced separately.
"In their preface to
"In their preface to the entries for 'J' Lewis and Short devote some space to its history and use and the thoughts of ancient Roman grammarians .That's a long piece, but it may suffice to say, as they do,that "many e.g. Cicero " used double J in some words, writing e.g. ejjus."
L&S are condemned to write gibberish by the attempt to talk about Cl Lat spelling using the modern spelling they have unfortunately adopted. What Cicero et al actually wrote was EIIVS. This was because they had their phonetic wits about them, and were writing before orthography became ossified, and still aimed to represent the way words were actually pronounced. Like writing soyyubl for the way Americans pronunce soluble, for instance. A double y may seem no less odd than a double ii to represent the same sound, or a double j if you are using the spelling conventions of L&S's days, but you can often see yy in Arabic transcriptions etc.
Don't get me wrong - L&S is an awe-inspiring monument to the lexicographer's art. What confuses people unnecessarily is its adherence to the Latin spelling of its day at the expense of that of classical times. I know it well, and therefore know what it says about these things (and what ancient Roman grammarians say about them) well enough not to be confused by relatively modern aberrations in the spelling. Accordingly the only thing I have consulted it for is to check my impression that the entry for eicio was under the spelling without the j (i.e. the first i). But you would be wrong to take me to task for not checking anything else you have referred to in L&S: I would have found a whole lot more potential confusions to avert, at ever greater length!
Bear with me. I hope to avoid vexing you in my next post about your interesting account of the numerals.
L&S are condemned to write gibberish by the attempt to talk about Cl Lat spelling using the modern spelling they have unfortunately adopted. What Cicero et al actually wrote was EIIVS. This was because they had their phonetic wits about them, and were writing before orthography became ossified, and still aimed to represent the way words were actually pronounced. Like writing soyyubl for the way Americans pronunce soluble, for instance. A double y may seem no less odd than a double ii to represent the same sound, or a double j if you are using the spelling conventions of L&S's days, but you can often see yy in Arabic transcriptions etc.
Don't get me wrong - L&S is an awe-inspiring monument to the lexicographer's art. What confuses people unnecessarily is its adherence to the Latin spelling of its day at the expense of that of classical times. I know it well, and therefore know what it says about these things (and what ancient Roman grammarians say about them) well enough not to be confused by relatively modern aberrations in the spelling. Accordingly the only thing I have consulted it for is to check my impression that the entry for eicio was under the spelling without the j (i.e. the first i). But you would be wrong to take me to task for not checking anything else you have referred to in L&S: I would have found a whole lot more potential confusions to avert, at ever greater length!
Bear with me. I hope to avoid vexing you in my next post about your interesting account of the numerals.
So fred, now for your numerals.
"that's not to say that a comparative view of ancient texts wouldn't show IV written earlier than IIII."
For once I think you should have stuck to your guns: we can be pretty sure that it wouldn't in fact show IV written earlier than IIII, but thank you for that research. Perhaps I should have had a rummage around myself, but I thought you might have found something persuasive already. What you say is after all more than likely: IV is the more sophisticated representation, as is IX.
"However, we may look to why the Romans used I and V."
I don't think what follows is "why the Romans used I and V." However, I am intrigued by the possibility that it may have been why they THOUGHT they used I and V. Or why at some stage over the succeding generations subsequent users may have come to think they used them. Alternatively it may have been a mnemonic aid to their use. I have come across various urban myths about this, but never this one. Do say where you came across it if you did not in fact think of it yourself. There is of course archaeological as well as mythopoeic evidence about the symbology of this, and it has some fascinating parallels to a few of the Sino-Japanese logograms for numerals, and shows that it is no less ideographic in origin than they are, and that the adaptation to the use of the Roman letters, which had long since evolved beyond their own quite different ultimate ideographic origins, came later. But you will doubtless be relieved to hear I am too worn out by all this to write about finger-counting and the abacus after all.
"Roman scribes sometimes wrote the last I in a series as j (thus: iij for iii), to make the text clearer."
I can only think you are winding me up with this. The practice was mediaeval at the earliest, for the reasons I have adumbrated re j above, and BTW all these practices derived
"that's not to say that a comparative view of ancient texts wouldn't show IV written earlier than IIII."
For once I think you should have stuck to your guns: we can be pretty sure that it wouldn't in fact show IV written earlier than IIII, but thank you for that research. Perhaps I should have had a rummage around myself, but I thought you might have found something persuasive already. What you say is after all more than likely: IV is the more sophisticated representation, as is IX.
"However, we may look to why the Romans used I and V."
I don't think what follows is "why the Romans used I and V." However, I am intrigued by the possibility that it may have been why they THOUGHT they used I and V. Or why at some stage over the succeding generations subsequent users may have come to think they used them. Alternatively it may have been a mnemonic aid to their use. I have come across various urban myths about this, but never this one. Do say where you came across it if you did not in fact think of it yourself. There is of course archaeological as well as mythopoeic evidence about the symbology of this, and it has some fascinating parallels to a few of the Sino-Japanese logograms for numerals, and shows that it is no less ideographic in origin than they are, and that the adaptation to the use of the Roman letters, which had long since evolved beyond their own quite different ultimate ideographic origins, came later. But you will doubtless be relieved to hear I am too worn out by all this to write about finger-counting and the abacus after all.
"Roman scribes sometimes wrote the last I in a series as j (thus: iij for iii), to make the text clearer."
I can only think you are winding me up with this. The practice was mediaeval at the earliest, for the reasons I have adumbrated re j above, and BTW all these practices derived
BTW all these practices derived from the evolution of lower-case letters, which came long after the classical period.
"Whoever wrote the wikipedia entry 'Roman numerals' has a theory about IIII and IV."
Well I did read that article, and indeed should have done so before your prompting, as apparently you and others here had already done in previous postings. It draws together a lot of what I had tried to put together in my own head, and of course scoops me on a few ideas of my own. But that is what is so wonderful about such sources these days.
"They say that the Romans put IIII because they put IV in IVPPITER"
Yes, and that is prob the main reason why they had no objection to IX for VIIII, so that that establishes itself as the norm much sooner, in answer to my original question.
"It would make more sense to note that U was carved as V on inscriptions and putting IV might be confusing in that case."
Again you may just be winding me up, but I am trying to get some sense talked, and that statement betokens a very funny idea of sense! Just for starters, U was NOT carved as V on inscriptions because U did not exist, on inscriptions or anywhere else. And certainly not as distinct from V. The only letter that did exist was V, which was a vowel (as in Eng full or fool) or semivowel (like Eng w) depending on the context.
In this case it was u, the symbol for the vowel, which much later evolved to distinguish that vowel from the semivowel v (which by that time had become a fricative, and therefore more in need of the distinction), as opposed to the case of i and j above, in which it was j, the symbol for the SEMIvowel, which much later evolved to distinguish that semivowel (which by that time had become an affrricate or a fricative, and therefore more in need of the distinction), from the vowel i. In both cases these developments derived a
"Whoever wrote the wikipedia entry 'Roman numerals' has a theory about IIII and IV."
Well I did read that article, and indeed should have done so before your prompting, as apparently you and others here had already done in previous postings. It draws together a lot of what I had tried to put together in my own head, and of course scoops me on a few ideas of my own. But that is what is so wonderful about such sources these days.
"They say that the Romans put IIII because they put IV in IVPPITER"
Yes, and that is prob the main reason why they had no objection to IX for VIIII, so that that establishes itself as the norm much sooner, in answer to my original question.
"It would make more sense to note that U was carved as V on inscriptions and putting IV might be confusing in that case."
Again you may just be winding me up, but I am trying to get some sense talked, and that statement betokens a very funny idea of sense! Just for starters, U was NOT carved as V on inscriptions because U did not exist, on inscriptions or anywhere else. And certainly not as distinct from V. The only letter that did exist was V, which was a vowel (as in Eng full or fool) or semivowel (like Eng w) depending on the context.
In this case it was u, the symbol for the vowel, which much later evolved to distinguish that vowel from the semivowel v (which by that time had become a fricative, and therefore more in need of the distinction), as opposed to the case of i and j above, in which it was j, the symbol for the SEMIvowel, which much later evolved to distinguish that semivowel (which by that time had become an affrricate or a fricative, and therefore more in need of the distinction), from the vowel i. In both cases these developments derived a
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