NOV 7, 2024

Arithmetic, Worldbuilding

<aside> 📒 Designing esoteric-looking numbers and reasoning about the choices

</aside>

Alpap is a positional numeral system with a base of two (binary).

It is based on “the best way to count” YouTube essay. The way it looks –short and long bars for “0” and “1”, and grouping with an underscore– is straight from the video.

The key differences:

• reversed digit order (the least significant number is written first)
• grouping bits into quadruplets (”hexadecimal glyphs”)
• pronunciation systems

This post is about the initial design of a numeral system: its looks and pronunciation.

I like how different and interesting Babylonian cuneiform numerals or Counting Rods look compared to the mundane Hindu-Arabic numerals. It hits Brandon Sandorson’s “strange attractor” factor: it is familiar enough to attract, yet fresh and different to intrigue.

I went with binary because it supposedly has advantages over other numeral systems (easy multiplication, fast exponentiation). Like, it’s not “different for the sake of being different” – but some fictional people could actually use it and seem smart for it.

What are its applications? Same as constructed languages: background worldbuilding. Technobabble at the screen of a starship, scribbles on clay tablets, or arcane formulae throughout an alchemical treatise.

Writing

First sixteen natural numbers in Alpap

Key Features

• Binary**:** everything is expressed with “0” (short bar) and “1” (long bar)