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Who created numbers and words?


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The first known example of an alphabet is the Sumerians, I believe - the Egyptians had heiroglyphics, and many civilizations probably had similar systems (the Chinese still use theirs), which are based on one symbol representing one word. The Sumerians took the step of using one symbol to represent one sound, and combinations of symbols to make words.

 

That, of course, only explains where writing came from. Words in spoken form date back to earlier than we can tell - at least 10,000 years. In the same manner, numbers in the form of notches on a tally stick date back at least 25,000 years, but the type of number system we use today is not nearly as ancient. It is believed to be the Indians who hit on the notion of place value, which is the foundation of our modern system.

 

In all these cases, the name and identity of the genius who had the original idea, if it was ever known at all, was forgotten millennia ago.

 

Are you suggesting Nick Griffin's Great Great Grand Pappy didn't create everything clever like numbers and letters?:huh:

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I don't think numbers and words have finished being invented nor will they ever be. Alphabets are continually changing albeit slowly but I think things have speeded up a bit with the advent of computers and the like. For instance .... I think text speak will begin to appear in dictionarys in the near future, words like 'm8', 'ru', '4' etc...etc. Words or phrases like this are now common parlance in many languages, often, a number being used to substitute letters.

New words are invented every day especially in the snowballing technology of computers, words like 'byte', 'Google', 'email' etc. Will it be long before 'cd', 'dvd', 'ram' etc will be considered words and not abbs? (ha!)

Individual letters are used in mathematics to represent values (e, m, c for example) Are these now words?

New numbers are easy to invent, here's one .... 65930185638523856101730635821198 ..... I bet that's never been written down before, I've just invented it! Think I'll give it a name... yeah, 'alcozillion' (hands off it's mine!) :suspect::hihi:

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I don't think numbers and words have finished being invented nor will they ever be. Alphabets are continually changing albeit slowly but I think things have speeded up a bit with the advent of computers and the like. For instance .... I think text speak will begin to appear in dictionarys in the near future, words like 'm8', 'ru', '4' etc...etc. Words or phrases like this are now common parlance in many languages, often, a number being used to substitute letters.

New words are invented every day especially in the snowballing technology of computers, words like 'byte', 'Google', 'email' etc. Will it be long before 'cd', 'dvd', 'ram' etc will be considered words and not abbs? (ha!)

Individual letters are used in mathematics to represent values (e, m, c for example) Are these now words?

New numbers are easy to invent, here's one .... 65930185638523856101730635821198 ..... I bet that's never been written down before, I've just invented it! Think I'll give it a name... yeah, 'alcozillion' (hands off it's mine!) :suspect::hihi:

 

Don't be such a 65930185638523856101730635821198 :rant:

 

Point being remember usage determines meaning. :D

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I don't think numbers and words have finished being invented nor will they ever be. Alphabets are continually changing albeit slowly but I think things have speeded up a bit with the advent of computers and the like. For instance .... I think text speak will begin to appear in dictionarys in the near future, words like 'm8', 'ru', '4' etc...etc. Words or phrases like this are now common parlance in many languages, often, a number being used to substitute letters.

New words are invented every day especially in the snowballing technology of computers, words like 'byte', 'Google', 'email' etc. Will it be long before 'cd', 'dvd', 'ram' etc will be considered words and not abbs? (ha!)

Individual letters are used in mathematics to represent values (e, m, c for example) Are these now words?

New numbers are easy to invent, here's one .... 65930185638523856101730635821198 ..... I bet that's never been written down before, I've just invented it! Think I'll give it a name... yeah, 'alcozillion' (hands off it's mine!) :suspect::hihi:

Language is constantly changing and words and names come into and go out of favour seemingly at random. Even with your own use of language it constantly changes, evolves and goes retro so its the same with language as a whole.

 

Also of course its a much smaller world and english is becoming more and more blurred as it is used and changed and abbreviated and fused with other languages

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