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Faience?! LOL! She's waaaaaay out of your league :) Hurry up and get hitched before she changes her mind! Congratulations!!! (Herd of baby PolyMaths, when?)
I know that Spartacus gods of the arena does not contain Latin but the way they speak would be something you could Make a video about because the way they speak is very compelling to people and there isn't a lot of documentation on itMake a video about because the way they speak is very compelling to people and there isn't a lot of documentation on it
If you are interested in this, there are two other things to investigate. 1. Futures traders when they were in open outcry pits, had price, volume and buy and sell hand signals. You could interview one, for an interesting video. 2. Why 12 for counting systems. ie. one to twelve have special names? Well you have 12 phalanges on your 4 fingers, and you can point to them using your thumb. So you can count to 12. With two hands, you can count to a gross. 144.
@@jugheadjed Lovely comment, but I believe it should be under the video directly, and not as a response to my rather irrelevant comment. I'm sure Luke appreciates it either way, though.
I did indeed win the jackpot: Irene is the most talented, charming, brilliant, sweetest, warmest, most loving person I’ve ever met. As my beauty fades, I hope she will continue to appreciate my off-beat humor and love of Star Trek.
@marcusholbert2525physical beauty does fade, but once you fall in love with someone, you no longer care about physical beauty. Love is a chemical reaction in our brains. It is nature’s trick to get us to reproduce and take care of our offspring. But to love and be loved is one of the most beautiful things you can ever feel. With that said, I hope no one leaves this world without ever having experienced it.
Wait Luke is getting married!? I'm so happy for you! Your vids have helped me a lot in learning Latin and Ancient Greek for the past few years. I wish the best of your marriage !
Attempting to do these signs with my fingers was harder than any riff I’ve played on guitar. I simply can’t manipulate my fingers in such a way. Imagine the ancient art/poetry/jokes that could have referenced these symbols and they’d go right over our heads.
Luke have you considered doing a video on the traditional English pronunciation of Latin? I think it’s an interesting subject and you and other Latin speakers will probably find it both jarring to the ears and insightful regarding why so many Latin loan words are so differently pronounced in English. Hope you’re well 👊🏻❤
Ho provato anch'io a fare i numeri con la mano mentre guardavo il video! È stato molto divertente, con la mano destra riesco a fare quasi tutti i numeri mentre con la mano sinistra mi rimane molto più difficile! Video super interessante, bravi Luke e Irene ❤
Luke, thats a really funny coincidence. Ive been to a small ancient Rome festival today (hosted in my country), Ive delivered a lecture about roman finger counting, like, several hours ago. Ive spent DAYS figuring out how to bend these fingers properly, how to count with right hand and so on, that was a real challenge. And here I am, coming home exhausted, open the RU-vid and see your new video about ROMAN COUNTING. Omg what a frustration, why couldnt you publish it a week earlier at least 😭 Nevertheless, thx for the great video. The experience WAS very painful, especially for my students heh 😅
@@polyMATHY_Luke hm well since you asked.. Actually yes :) You suggest thats using three fingers for thousands is more logical, because of the "view" of the number, from the observer. I decided otherwise, its seems more logical that the three fingers are for the hundreds and other for thousands, because you just use your right hand as multiplier by a hundred. E.g., left hand 4 = right hand 400, left hand 40 = right hand 4000 Maybe mistaken tho, but afaiu its two different opinions from two different ancient dudes, and we dont know for sure which is true :)
Just like musicians (who practice this point) have more independent finger motion, I'd expect Romans who have practiced this counting since childhood to have no problem making the gestures.
Another Roman, of course. Guido, who moved to Arrezo in Tuscany, went to the monastery and was appalled with the insanely out of tune choir. He decided he had enough with the neumes squiggles indicating up and down, and used his finger to make a notation giving each pitch a specific name, thus creating the solfege scale we use today. And fingers continues to be a useful form of communication.😉
Mi sono impegnato, ci sono riuscito, ho dimenticato tutto 18 secondi dopo. Incredibilmente interessante quanto complicato possa essere contare. PS. credo di aver fatto tombola ad un certo punto.
We taught this is sophomore year gymnasium Latin class. I completely forgot it. You're very cute couple. You're starting to look like 1800s Englishman tho. 😊
@@monalisadavinci7076 I'm not saying it as a bad thing, just so he knows. We're on good terms and he's extremely nice person. Why would anyone see looking as an English gentleman as a bad thing. I'm just telling him no one will believe him he's a fiance of a beautiful Latina (and Rome girls are as Latina as it gets, it's literally named after them). Hehehe. Not because of geography. More because of history. He'll look like 1830s archeologist who just discovered Tutmoses (not related to Moses, it just means Tut's son), and no one will believe him, unless they think he discovered Star Gate as well and snatched her in 1960s from a Vespa.
Video suggestion...have you ever noticed we say Latin abnormally? Both natives and classicists of Spanish and Latin do this. They avoid the pronunciation rules of their languages when they say this word. You can clearly hear them say Latin and Latino with an æ sound instead of an 'a' sound that fits the pronunciation rules for their language. They say lætin and lætino. With Spanish it's really noticeable as they tend to stress the syllable. It's a weird phenomenon that they only do with this one word. And don't say they don't, they do just listen. You can even see the mouth formation for these words when they do it, it's clearly an æ formation.
I find some of these signs (moderately) easy, but many are a bit painful or just not possible without manhandling some fingers. I suppose if I was a guitarist or Roman (like the fair Irene), I might find the signs easy. Anyhow, great video as always.
Wow, so many of these are downright painful! Luke, I can't do most of them either, and it hurts just trying. Apparently, ancient Romans had contortionist's fingers and preferred this torture to the crazy idea of representing each number by an equivalent number of raised fingers, blasphemy I know. However, realizing that the decimal system hadn't been invented, the concept of showing a number for each digit using positional notation would've been incomprehensible to them.
I think I had it a little easier than Luke, but it was definitely painful for me. Especially since 1) I'm right-handed so 1-9 sucked & 2) if I'm not mistaken, the ring & pinky fingers share a nerve or tendon or something like that, so moving one independent from the other is challenging. And here I thought my Vulcan salute was impressive XD. Also, congrats to both of you; you seem to be very happy together & I hope you guys stay that way.
not the same, but when I was little, my father sneakily taught me about binary by teaching me to count to 1023 on my hands. (each finger representing a one or a zero) I quickly noticed that the middle finger was four, the other middle finger was 128, and both middle fingers was 132.
There are some times where I get reminded that people have often called me double jointed. Luke having such a hard time bending his fingers was a definitely unexpected time.
And here I thought I could never disprove of any form of math, this is painful! Makes you wonder how this translates to ancient romans perceiving adulthood and everyday trading. Young children were not cognitively ready to deal numbers but also their fingers needed training. Likewise, old age would bring arthritis and weakness (not to mention dental care not existing) so it would be harder to do trade.
Could be! My impression is that it was something everyone could do, and also easily understand even if done badly. In the modern day we laid both the visual recognition and the physical ability. But kids can learn
3:20 Apart from the fact that chisen bop is using the same semi-pentarithmic system as Roman numerals, it is also more comfortable. Making 1 look different from 7 seems weirder than the standard version of G on a guitar.
I got hand cramps trying to do this. If your fiancée was not Roman, I think I would try to sue you. Perhaps Romans were naturally selected for being able to count on their fingers like this? That is why she can do this and we cannot.
Anyone (of course having fully functional hand with standard palm) could show one-hand gestures for all integer number in the range from 0 to 255, and _without any help_ . So using 2 hands would show gestures for all integer numbers from 0 to 64535. How? A palm had 5 fingers-digits, so assign them binary digits (straight=1, bent=0), therefore a palm has 32 combinations of values from 0 to 31. But it would be like that in one position of the palm, for example with its back facing the viewer with the forearm vertically below the palm. Then, turn the palm with back facing the shower, thus we have number from 32 to 63. Then the same pair but with the forearm in vertical position with palm below, thus making numbers 64 to 127. Then the forearm horizontally with straight elbow, thus 128 to 191. Then the forearm horizontally with bent elbow, thus making 192 to 255. Extending that system to the other hand you will get 256•256=65536 combinations which gives you numbers from 0 to 65535.
Having read the article over at LacusCurtius a few years back and developed an interest in _computatio Romana_ for a while now, I'm fairly sure that you can just bend the middle joint ninety degrees for 1-6, and then the bottom joint “normally” for 7-9. With a bit of practice it's easy to do, except for when I'm doing 50 where I'm completely unable to curl my left thumb without also curling my left index... Oddly enough, the right thumb and index do not have that problem, and I can do 500 just fine!
Great test to demonstrate yourself how guitar playing affects your finger range of motion and independence. Also at the point where you reached 7 and started repeating almost identical signals, I got the confirmation that it was better to learn binary counting on fingers to reach 32 in one hand and 1024 if you use both hands. I disagreed with both the left and bottom signals and the literal explanation, no way can they all describe the same signals. I interpreted three different signals for every 10 from the pictures and explanation. I'm sure there were as many dialects in these as in speech and I can imagine a beginner would trip on these regularly in action. Especially if someone was very comfortable with these and due to their anatomy and lazyness signaled slightly ambiguously. And let's be fair, to this day I don't understand how we are able to practice moving ring and pinky fingers mostly separately, because looking at the anatomy under the skin, to me it looks like they indeed would be forced to move together. Personally my last joints don't move voluntarily, so I figured I'd do 1-6 with basically 90° finger slightly curved and 7-> slightly bent upper palm to drop that same shape lower to the palm. Otherwise I can't make it happen. And I'll make a point that these hand shapes are like counting with buddhist mudras - the meditation finger and hand positions. They are identical (which maybe isn't a shocker given how many options there are to comfortably signal with fingers). Ahamkara and Gyan Mudras, active Gyan, Vayu, Chin and Chatura Mudra for example. But they should've copied the rest as well, it's so much more unambiguous if you touch your thumb to different fingers, their tips or overlapping, than touching the thumb and index finger in slightly different ways. Although after seeing how you combined the tens with single digits, this starts making more sense. And surprisingly it was much easier to form them this way, somehow the hand gestures become less refined and more clear when you have the tens and digits together. It was no longer the question of exactly matching the position, but more broad strokes. Like the pinky just slightly curled at the upper part of the palm (clearly not a straight finger pointing up) versus the pinky fully extended over the palm. No ambiguity. A lightbulb moment.
Does she play a woodwind or string instrument? This reminds me of part of the physical tests my elementary school's band and music teachers did when trying to determine which instruments each child would potentially find easiest to learn. I play flute and saxophone, woodwind instruments, because of the choices I gave as options I was interested in learning the teachers determined that due to my fingers' flexibility that woodwinds were a good fit. My grandmothers both played piano and I have cousins that play violin and guitar who also have similar flexibility. My sister and niece and some aunts play trumpet. I also learned trumpet later on, for fun, but I'm definitely not as good at it as they are. They don't have the finger flexibility, but excel in other ways and it definitely shows as it was easy for my sister and niece to learn the trumpet. My sister learned the clarinet and had lots of struggles, mostly with the use of the fingers. I have a friend whose sons both play reed instruments; clarinet and saxophone. She nor her husband (or anyone in her husband's family) play an instrument. Her mother plays piano and takes credit for her grandsons abilities to play woodwinds. So if she plays a woodwind or string instrument, maybe that's an indication of her flexibility with her fingers and that's why she was able to more easily make the gestures. I also found it quite easy to do. If she doesn't play any instruments, well she's got the finger flexibility to do some! This was fun to learn! Thanks for making and sharing this video!
This is fascinating. I guess I have more dexterity than I thought, not a single one of these is difficult for me. With double jointed cousins and thyroid issues in my family, it makes me wonder if there's legitimately some heredetary element to this. Did the Romans point out any people's who couldn't do this? Cause there's a number of genetic factors relating to joint and tendon range of motion. Your fiancee and you look like you're having a blast!
