Sarcasm is difficult to assess in online discussions, so I hope you will forgive me if I paraphrase what I think you’re actually saying as follows: “That’s a bloody stupid idea, because if you say 0->first, 1->second then you also need to say 21->twenty-second and that would be incredibly confusing and annoying, so if we switched to zero-based ordinals we definitely should not do that.”
(I’m only ~95% sure you don’t mean it seriously.)
I do not think that counting “first, second, twifth, third, …” implies also counting ”..., nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-second, …” or ”..., nineteenth, twenty-first, twenty-second, …”; one may reasonably be moved more strongly by etymology in some cases than in others. I think we are all very much used to using “first” for the, er, initial item in an enumeration and “second” for the one after it, which is the real reason why the etymological argument has what force it does; the strength of association between ordinal number and position decreases as one moves further down the list, and is entirely gone by the time we’re into the twenties, and analogy is powerful but not that powerful.
I am not particularly endorsing my friend’s proposal, in any case. I’m ambivalent about its actual merits, and in any case I’m not actually going to start numbering ordinals from zero outside mathematics and programming. Mostly, I think it’s amusing.
… But if I were persuaded, it would probably be because by some means currently inconceivable to me the whole anglophone world had been persuaded to rethink its numerical terminology. In that case, I suppose it would be worth considering redefining the “Xty-second” words for consistency.
I think that’s way overconfident. I think the context implies at most a 50% chance of sarcasm.
(Sarcasm, that is, relative to the first comment—I’m suggesting, in other words, that cousin_it’s degree of seriousness did not change much between the two comments.)
No, I was completely serious and I really like your friend’s idea. Sorry if that came across as sarcasm.
As for twentieth vs twenty-first, I think it’s better to keep twentieth, unless you also change the cardinal twenty to twenty-zero, which doesn’t seem useful. So nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-second, twenty-twifth, etc.
My apologies for the misunderstanding. I agree that (conditional on doing all this stuff) you wouldn’t want “twenty-first” corresponding to 20 even if you had “twenty-second” corresponding to 21.
Sarcasm is difficult to assess in online discussions, so I hope you will forgive me if I paraphrase what I think you’re actually saying as follows: “That’s a bloody stupid idea, because if you say 0->first, 1->second then you also need to say 21->twenty-second and that would be incredibly confusing and annoying, so if we switched to zero-based ordinals we definitely should not do that.”
(I’m only ~95% sure you don’t mean it seriously.)
I do not think that counting “first, second, twifth, third, …” implies also counting ”..., nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-second, …” or ”..., nineteenth, twenty-first, twenty-second, …”; one may reasonably be moved more strongly by etymology in some cases than in others. I think we are all very much used to using “first” for the, er, initial item in an enumeration and “second” for the one after it, which is the real reason why the etymological argument has what force it does; the strength of association between ordinal number and position decreases as one moves further down the list, and is entirely gone by the time we’re into the twenties, and analogy is powerful but not that powerful.
I am not particularly endorsing my friend’s proposal, in any case. I’m ambivalent about its actual merits, and in any case I’m not actually going to start numbering ordinals from zero outside mathematics and programming. Mostly, I think it’s amusing.
… But if I were persuaded, it would probably be because by some means currently inconceivable to me the whole anglophone world had been persuaded to rethink its numerical terminology. In that case, I suppose it would be worth considering redefining the “Xty-second” words for consistency.
I think that’s way overconfident. I think the context implies at most a 50% chance of sarcasm.
(Sarcasm, that is, relative to the first comment—I’m suggesting, in other words, that cousin_it’s degree of seriousness did not change much between the two comments.)
Evidently you were right. Have an upvote.
No, I was completely serious and I really like your friend’s idea. Sorry if that came across as sarcasm.
As for twentieth vs twenty-first, I think it’s better to keep twentieth, unless you also change the cardinal twenty to twenty-zero, which doesn’t seem useful. So nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-second, twenty-twifth, etc.
My apologies for the misunderstanding. I agree that (conditional on doing all this stuff) you wouldn’t want “twenty-first” corresponding to 20 even if you had “twenty-second” corresponding to 21.