> The numerical notation of 4 is IV in Roman numerals.
Using "IIII" instead of "IV" isn't even necessarily wrong. Rome was a big empire with a widely-distributed populace that lasted for a thousand years. The usage of numerals changed over time and according to context:
"While subtractive notation for 4, 40 and 400 (IV, XL and CD) has been the usual form since Roman times, additive notation to represent these numbers (IIII, XXXX and CCCC)[9] continued to be used, including in compound numbers like 24 (XXIIII),[10] 74 (LXXIIII),[11] and 490 (CCCCLXXXX).[12] The additive forms for 9, 90, and 900 (VIIII,[9] LXXXX,[13] and DCCCC[14]) have also been used, although less often. The two conventions could be mixed in the same document or inscription, even in the same numeral. For example, on the numbered gates to the Colosseum, IIII is systematically used instead of IV, but subtractive notation is used for XL; consequently, gate 44 is labelled XLIIII."
As for clock faces, the explanation that I always heard was that it simplified the manufacturing process to use IIII rather than IV; something about making better use of materials to have one fewer V and one more I.
Dang that just hit me. They were around for 1 THOUSAND years. I'm an Indian-American, and the country I was born in has only been around since 1947 and America since 1776.
In terms of "empires" that were founded, its crazy how young our modern societies are compared to Rome.
Ha, that's nothin'. The ancient Egyptians used a 365 day calendar (with no leap years) so it drifted by .25 days every year. So after 730 years it's essentially backwards (summer solstice is when winter solstice used to be etc.). After that, it starts coming back into alignment again but takes another 730 years to get there. They used their calendar for so long that it nearly had time to roll over like this twice!
My favorite factoid about ancient Egypt is that Cleopatra, the last pharaon queen of Egypt, lived much closer to the time when humans landed on Moon than to the time when the great pyramids were built.
True...but "last pharaon queen of Egypt" may be misleading, for those unfamiliar with the history:
Cleopatra was a Macedonian Greek, descended from one of Alexander the Great's generals. Alexander had conquered Egypt about 3 centuries earlier...taking it from the Persians, who had previously conquered the final "native" XXX Dynasty...
Yes-ish. Quoting a bit from Dr. Bret Devereaux, whose take on Cleopatra VII I linked a bit further down:
> Let’s start with languages, because I think this fact can be presented in a somewhat distorted way. The language of the Ptolemaic court was Greek, initially Macedonian Greek (the Macedonians had a pronounced accent), though Plutarch notes that some of the later Ptolemies had lost their Macedonian accent (Plut. Ant. 27.3-4). Cleopatra, by contrast, was the first of the Ptolemies to bother to learn Egyptian (which should tell you something about the character of Ptolemaic rule; imagine if King Charles was the first English king since George I and kings from the House of Hanover to bother to learn English). The problem with this fact is that it is incomplete, presenting Cleopatra as a Greek-speaker who learned the language of her people out of sincere devotion, but that’s not what Plutarch says. Plutarch says:
>> She could turn [her voice] easily to whichever language she wished and she conversed with few barbarians entirely through an interpreter, and she gave her decisions herself to most of them, including Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes and Parthians. She is said to have learned the languages of many others also, although the kings before her did not undertake to learn the Egyptian language, even though some of them had abandoned the Macedonian dialect.16
> So let’s unpack that. This isn’t a native speaker of Greek who learned just the language of her subjects, but a spectacularly skilled linguist who learned a lot of different languages, quite regardless of if she ruled the people in question. Running through the list, she evidently learned Ethiopian, the language of the people on her southern border, the speech of the Troglodytae, the people who lived on the coast of the Red Sea (a hinterland of her kingdom). The ‘language of the Hebrews’ here is probably Aramaic rather than Hebrew (which would also cover much of Syria), while the language of the Medes and Parthians might mean both Old Persian and the Parthian language. To which we must add Egyptian, implied by that last sentence; it also seems fairly clear Cleopatra knew at least some Latin.17 This is part of why I find arguments that use Cleopatra’s knowledge of Egyptian as strong proof either for her Egyptian ancestry or deep attachment to Egypt less than fully compelling; she was surely not Parthian and did not have a deep attachment to Parthia, but she learned their language too. Again, there’s not nothing here, but it’s not a slam dunk either.
SO - literally truth that she learned Egyptian. But extremely sketchy to extrapolate from that fact to any sort of "she cared more about her subjects" conclusion.
Yeah. I didn't want to imply that she particularly cared about the language of the people she ruled, as much as I wanted to imply that none of her predecessors did
Also, Cleopatra considered herself Greek (or rather hellinistic) and had the lineage to prove that. She is remembered fondly because she was decently respectful of her Egyptian subjects, but that was mostly in contrast to her predecessors.
Woah that's insane. I remember there was a reddit thread about these things and one nugget was that the Oxford University was built before the Aztec Empire existed.
Somehow, for the first time ever, I recently heard the idea of the 13 month year and I sort of nodded my head in interest. Then I heard someone breakdown the history of calendars and it really blew my mind. Mainly the amount of thought that went into it and the incredible span of time it was revised and discussed!
The 13 month per calendar year (Mayan calendar) just makes so much sense as a web developer but somehow as a human it also seems hella mundane to have the same 28 day cycle repeated. Maybe that last day of the year party would make up for it though.
I quite like the hobbit calendar. 12 months of 30 days each, plus 5 (or 6) extra days that don't belong to a month and are celebration days. Mid-year day and the leap day don't have a day of the week, so each date always is the same day of the week.
The only disadvantage I can see is that you’d have your birthday in the same day of the week every year. If you are born on a Monday, you’ll celebrate on a Monday every year in your life.
I'm so familiar with the Gregorian calendar that I would prefer the International Fixed Calendar (13 months of 28 days + Leap Day and Year Day) with its yearly synchronization over the Mayan calendar.
The farmers did not care. Nile floods at sometime, then it goes back then you do all the normal things until you harvest. Repeat. So they really did not need calendar for that.
And on other hand the clerks had enough time to make writing system really hard to learn so such thing would make things even better for them...
This is actually partially part of it - if you're tracking your activities based on natural phenomena, you don't need to worry about a calendar - just things like "days since full moon" or "weeks since the flood".
If you consider the so-called Byzantines to be Romans (and you should, for lots of reasons), the Roman state was at least a notable regional power all the way from the mid 300s BCE all the way up to 1204 - that's around 1500 years. And it existed for a few hundred years more on either end.
I remember someone (maybe Tamim Ansary?) writing that states that claimed to be the direct successor of the Roman Empire existed until 1922, at least in the sense that the Ottoman Empire used some titles and administrative terminology of the Byzantine Empire.
> After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II, Ottoman sultans came to regard themselves as the successors of the Roman Empire, hence their occasional use of the titles caesar (قیصر qayser) of Rûm, and emperor, as well as the caliph of Islam.
which used that term after a break of several centuries (so not very continuously with the ancient Roman Empire). But Germans then claimed to be Roman emperors (in some sense) until 1806!
These aren't as continuous with the ancient Roman empire as the Byzantines, but it's still pretty astonishing to think that various monarchs were still claiming to be (in at least a theoretical legal sense) Roman emperors during the 1800s and 1900s.
Also the Czars of Russia. The Romanovs were descending from the niece of the last Byzantine Emperor (Sophia Palaiologina niece of Constantine XI).
So you are right that WWI can be argued to the real end of the Roman Empire!!!
One of these days I am going to a series on “When did the Roman Empire End?” Currently, I have at least 10 plausible dates/events. It turns out to be a very interesting overview of a lot of events and characters in Western History.
Unfortunately, Putin still occasionally invokes Russia as the successor to the Eastern Roman Empire in an attempt to justify his imperial ambitions, so we're still riding this train.
There is a Russian name for Istanbul - Царьгра́д (Tsargrad). The relevancy of this traditional name in our time can be glimpsed from the media org tsargrad.tv , a Russian equivalent of fox news.
It's not just a Russian name, it's the Slavic name for Constantinople. It's used in all Slavic-speaking countries when teaching Byzantine history, of course, written with slight distortions depending on the Slavic language in question
Probably when thinking about these sorts of things the important number is the total number of lived human years, and not the number of chronological years.
Assuming I don't die too early, Portugal will have existed continuously for 900 years during my lifetime (founded in 1143). It was administered by a governor appointed by a spanish king for 60 years at one point, but never stopped being a distinct country.
This isn't true. The majority of countries are much younger than this. The thousand year old ones are the exceptions.
Many countries have an 'origin story' which implies that they are the same thing as random countries or regions which had similar names/languages/locations but in the vast majority cases these are something between a loose approximation and a myth.
I think the above commenter's point is that "countries" doesn't just mean the formal nation state, but the cultural group. The nation of China was created on 1949. China is much older than 75 years. Likewise, Germanic tribes existed as far back as the Ancient World.
But the only real connection between 'Germanic tribes' and the modern state of Germany is that people from the latter believe the former to be their forefathers. They are not genetically closer to them than other Europeans, nor do they speak the same language or call themselves the same word or have the same lifestyle or inhabit the same places.
During the Yugoslav period, there was a minority group of Bulgarian migrants in one region of Yugoslavia. Like most linguistic groups they adopted the national language and believed themselves to be Yugoslav. However their group was sometimes referred to as 'Macedonian' because the corner of Yugoslavia near Bulgaria is also near Macedonia in Greece. They now have their own country (and language - whose only differences from Serbo-Croat are those which were intentionally introduced), and many believe themselves to be the descendants and cultural and spiritual heirs of Alexander the Great (even though Alexander reigned over and left an influence over a region bigger than Europe).
All countries have things like this in their history. It's just that generally they are a few hundred years further away.
No, there are continuities in language. It's changed over time, but it's still descended from those older cultures. French has it's roots in Frankish people that settled there in the migration period, with Latin and other influence. It's not just people arbitrarily claiming lineage. There are also specifics in culture and tradition, e.g. Christmas trees date back to pagan Germanic festivals.
Incorrect, English does indeed have German influence but it also has more Celtic influence. One is closer to Old German than the other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_High_German
Germanic tribes in the ancient world did not speak Old High German. The status of Old High German as the origin language of modern German is part of the construction of German history in exactly the manner I have described.
There is very little Celtic in Old English. It's very close to a synthesis of Anglish and French. There's much more Danish in English than there is Celtic.
> Germanic tribes in the ancient world did not speak Old High German.
As per the link, it was spoken around 500 AD. Which is at the tail end of the Ancient World but it's still far older than Germany as a country.
> The status of Old High German as the origin language of modern German is part of the construction of German history in exactly the manner I have described
Are you just rejecting the entire field of linguistics? Languages absolutely do have descendants, and while there is admixture and external influences there is broad continuity between old German and contemporary German.
I don't think you've established any factual challenge to either of my statements:
> But the only real connection between 'Germanic tribes' and the modern state of Germany is that people from the latter believe the former to be their forefathers. They are not genetically closer to them than other Europeans, nor do they speak the same language or call themselves the same word or have the same lifestyle or inhabit the same places.
> Modern German is no closer to the language of a randomly chosen 'Germanic Tribe' than English, Prussian, Danish, Yiddish, Swedish, Czech, etc
The fact that there is some connection between modern German and Old High German and some connection between Old High German and the languages of the Germanic tribes does not contradict either.
You stated that old Germany wasn't spoken in the ancient world, when the link I posted explicitly said it was. You also wrote that "the only real connection between 'Germanic tribes' and the modern state of Germany is that people from the latter believe the former to be their forefathers", which is also not true. The languages are indeed linguistically descended from old Germany.
English is also less closely related to old German on account of the Norman french influence.
The Czech language is Slavic [1], it's substantially different than German. It's more similar to Polish or Russian.
Swedish and Danish are both North Germanic [2] rather than West Germanic [3] languages. Related to, but distinct from the West Germanic that would evolve into contemporary German.
Yes, there is a lot factually wrong with your posts.
>During the Yugoslav period, there was a minority group of Bulgarian migrants in one region of Yugoslavia. Like most linguistic groups they adopted the national language and believed themselves to be Yugoslav. However their group was sometimes referred to as 'Macedonian' because the corner of Yugoslavia near Bulgaria is also near Macedonia in Greece.
Wow, this is... biased. Sincerely, a Macedonian.
People living in Macedonia (or, to avoid confusion, sigh... North Macedonia), have at one point (and even today, by some), yes, been called Bulgarians, but we've also been called Serbs and Greeks (in northern Greece, since Greece claims that everyone in Greece is Greek, lol). So, you claiming that we have only been Bulgarians, who, judging by the tone of your comment, got brainwashed into thinking we're Yugoslavs and after that Macedonians is absurd, to say the least.
Serbs tried to make us Serbs before Bulgarians tried to make us Bulgarian, and they too failed. You can't make up an entire nation in a top-down manner, the people living in those lands first have to show signs that they consider themselves as a separate nation from the rest in any given region, which the Macedonians have, time and again.
Now, to be fair to Serbs, there's a lot of Serbian cultural influence here, and a lot of people here do understand Serbian more than Bulgarian (even though Bulgarian and Macedonian are, on paper, more similar than Serbian and Macedonian), but still, they failed in trying to convince us to be Serbian rather than what we are now, a separate nation, Macedonian.
Also, the modern idea of a separate, sovereign Macedonian state for the Macedonian nation has existed since at least 1880*
> (and language - whose only differences from Serbo-Croat are those which were intentionally introduced)
1. And this is how I know you're not a Bulgarian because a true Bulgarian nationalist would claim that Macedonian is not its own language, but that it's only a dialect of Bulgarian.
2. There are a lot of differences on paper from Serbo-Croatian. It's closer to Bulgarian. Still, you don't create a language in a top-down manner. Read "Za makedonckite raboti" by Krste Petkov Misirkov.
> and many believe themselves to be the descendants and cultural and spiritual heirs of Alexander the Great (even though Alexander reigned over and left an influence over a region bigger than Europe).
Not sure how true this is. There are some definitely, but I feel they're more of a very loud minority, or at least not the majority by a long shot. Anybody who is seriously claiming they're direct descendants of some guy who lived over 2 thousand years ago, and completely forgetting about everyone that has walked and mixed in that region between then and now (think of all the Greeks, Romans, Slavs, Jews, Ottomans, and everybody else I'm not mentioning) is to have his mental faculties questioned. This goes not only for my fellow denizens, but for anybody claiming such a historical connection to a long-lost civilization, and especially so for those who are geographically not related (I could name names, but that would further diverge this conversation.) But at the same time to claim that people living in present-day Macedonia (the entire region, not just the state) have no connection whatsoever, is, as well, stupid.
I read the whole thing. It's literally a showcase of all the mental tics and obfuscations involved in the construction of artificial national histories as I described in my earlier comment.
Accusations of bias, the suggestion that 'only nationality X would question this aspect of our proud Y history', turning minor linguistic coincidences into meaningful history, the admission that 'everyone is from all over the place, but nonetheless we are all definitely from Z because [no evidence]'.
Self-definition based on 'we are W because we're not U and definitely not V.' The denial that it's possible to force the construction of a cultural, linguistic or ethnic group, despite numerous examples of exactly this happening. Appeal to biased histories written by true believers. Appeal to linguistic treatises only available in the language in question. Appeal to the time-honored authority of ... the 1880s, a (not very distant) era when every single group of people in Europe was trying to become a nation.
Alexander the Great did not live in Skopje. He did not speak Macedonian, 'a language closer to Bulgarian than to Serbian'. There are at least 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe which have closer cultural, political or ethnic connections with Alexander the Great than Macedonia does.
> It's literally a showcase of all the mental tics and obfuscations involved in the construction of artificial national histories as I described in my earlier comment.
I agree, all nations are artificial creations. I'd recommend Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson. And never did I claim that a unified Macedonian nation has existed for longer than 144 years (since 1880), so not sure what the "artificial national histories" part is alluding to(?)
>Self-definition based on 'we are W because we're not U and definitely not V.'
What's wrong with this? Americans are American because they defied the British Empire. What are you going to claim next - that Americans don't exist? If so, good luck!
And isn't that how all nations are? The French are French because they're neither German, nor English, nor Spanish, nor Italian. Nations are essentially just in-group vs out-group behaviors and dynamics manifested in relatively large landscapes.
Serbs are Serbs because they're not Croats or Bulgarians or Macedonians or Albanians. Macedonians are Macedonians because they're not Serbs or Greeks or Bulgarians or Albanians.
All nations (groups) have traits that are different enough from another nation (group), which is why they become a group (nation) in the first place.
>The denial that it's possible to force the construction of a cultural, linguistic or ethnic group, despite numerous examples of exactly this happening.
I suppose I worded that part terribly, so it's my fault. I tried to say that all (yes, all) top-down nation-building projects don't work. I know you're going to provide examples of something like the middle eastern arab states, but that would be a terrible example, as no one, and I mean no one, from, say, as an example, from Saudi Arabia views himself as Saudi Arabian first, instead they view themselves as Arabs; same goes for people from other projects like Qatar, QAE, Bahrain and the other "nation"-states in that region. The people living in those "nation"-states didn't organically decide to create their state based on their nation, instead their "nation"-state borders were created by some interventionists in a faraway land, unsuccessfully because nobody there thinks that his "nation"-state is much different from his neighboring "nation"-state.
Macedonia, conversely, is not a top-down nation created by bureaucrats - people here, like people all over the world who belong to bottom-up nations, came to their own conclusion that they're different from those around them, hence they became a separate group (nation). And yes, if we got back far enough, at one point people here did consider them Bulgarians, and at another time Serbs, and at a third time, much further back, Greeks (I am not arguing against this fact, if you think I am then we are arguing bout different topics), but if we go back far enough, most people in Europe alone came from one group, which does not invalidate their national affiliations today.
>Appeal to biased histories written by true believers.
Where did I mention this? True believers?
>Appeal to linguistic treatises only available in the language in question.
And btw, it's available in Bulgarian too, it was published in Sofia in 1903 after all; and most copies were confiscated or destroyed by the Bulgarian police, wonder why that happened?
I also wonder why Bulgaria occupied Macedonia in WWII - it wouldn't make sense to occupy one's own people, no? Unless... :)
>Appeal to the time-honored authority of ... the 1880s, a (not very distant) era when every single group of people in Europe was trying to become a nation.
And when did I say that the Macedonian nation has existed since time immemorial? Starting to look like you didn't read my comment. And what's wrong with the 1880s specifically? Would it have been better if it happened in the 1980s? What about the 1780s? Does America not exist because the revolution happened to be in 1776 - a random year as any?
>Alexander the Great did not live in Skopje.
Never said he did. He probably never stepped foot in what was Skopje at the time. Still, Macedonia is not Skopje, contrary to what most foreigners think (along with our politicians, unfortunately.)
>He did not speak Macedonian
Of course not, and I never said he did. The modern Macedonian language is a Slavic language, it would be absurd if he spoke a Slavic language some ~1000 years before the Slavs came to the Balkan with their language.
There is a chance that he spoke some version of Aincent Macedonian, likely a dialect of Greek, which is very likely not related to the modern Slavic language which bears the same name, along with Greek, the prestige language of the time.
> 'a language closer to Bulgarian than to Serbian'.
Yes, what's wrong with that? It's in the South Slavic branch of languages, in the eastern group with Bulgarian and Old Church Slavonic. All languages in the South Slavic group form a dialectic continuum, meaning that we can all more or less understand each other (except, I would add, Slovene). Does that mean that no nation whatsoever exists in the Balkan? Or that we are all just one nation, even though we don't think we are, which is what nations are based around in the first place - thinking we belong to one group and not the other?
>There are at least 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe which have closer cultural, political or ethnic connections with Alexander the Great than Macedonia does.
And when did I say otherwise?
Seems to me that more than half the time here you're just arguing with yourself. And a couple of lines of yours read like they've been copy-pasted from some ready-made document full of zingers
> I mean... most European countries (modulo some exceptions like Germany) existed (non-continuously) for at least a thousand years.
This is interesting to me. What does it mean for a country to exist non-continuously? I can understand making the case under some sort of continuity despite dramatic changes in e.g. control of land or type of government. Sort of like a nation-state Ship of Theseus.
But I don't understand how this works under the non-continuous case. If the temporal connection is broken how is it the same entity?
I don't think anyone claims it's /exactly/ the same entity (except in a legal sense after a government-in-exile is restored home, such as after World War II). But there's a general sense that a country can in some way be a continuation of a previous one, particularly if it shares the same language and a similar territory.
Compare the borders of something like the Duchy of Bohemia and the modern-day Czech Republic. That's two states over a thousand years apart, separated by centuries of highs and lows, including uncountable foreign invasions and Austrian rule for four centuries. And yet there's something obviously parallel to them - states ruled from Prague, inhabited largely by Czech speakers, extending to virtually the same territory.
Europe's natural and linguistic borders are relatively stable, so the emergence of similar states over similar territories in time is not unexpected.
> a country can in some sense be a continuation of a previous one, particularly if it shares the same language and a similar territory.
This is the sort of thing that’s true, but only if you don’t think about it deeply. People in England definitely spoke English, but that doesn’t mean that we would be able to understand them. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote one of the first major works of literature in English, but 99.9% of Englishmen alive today wouldn’t be able to understand a word of it because of how much English has changed.
> In Gernade at the sege eek hadde he be Of Algezir, and riden in Belmarye. At Lyeys was he, and at Satalye, Whan they were wonne; and in the Grete See At many a noble aryve hadde he be.
This book needs to be translated into English for us to understand it, despite it being written in an older form of English.
And obviously, English isn’t a special case. Every language has evolved over time, to the point where it’s nearly impossible to understand a few hundred years later. So sure, we think the people who lived in this city a few hundred years ago are our countrymen, but realistically we wouldn’t be able to speak a word to each other.
> This is the sort of thing that’s true, but only if you don’t think about it deeply.
I have a linguistics degree and a passion for historical linguistics that will result in me talking your ear off about Indo-European ablaut, so this is probably the first time in my life I've ever been accused of failing to think deeply about language variation / change!
But I do agree with tsunamifury's comment - what you say is interesting, but rather beside the point. What's relevant is a sense of continuity, not whether the modern speakers would understand the original language or not. (I'm unsure why the latter would be relevant at all?) As Benedict Anderson has argued, a nation is above all an imagined community, so what's relevant is that Czech speakers picture a sense of continuity with the speakers of Slavic dialects in 1000 AD, and not with - say - the speakers of Celtic or Germanic dialects spoken at the same time.
(It's worth noting that your example is fairly unrepresentative, by the by. English is a language with an unusually high rate of change (though I'm surprised you went with Chaucer, which many educated English speakers can largely follow, and not something like Beowulf, which no English speaker could understand without training). It's also worth noting that the Slavic languages are languages with an unusually low rate of change, so a text as old as Chaucer would be relatively much easier for Czech speakers to read.)
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you thought so. I meant it is a widely held belief among most people. They would feel a stronger affinity for their ancestors from a thousand years ago than for their neighbour, if their neighbour looked different to them.
I meant to say that this idea that the people 1000 years ago being “my people” doesn’t hold up to close inspection. There is no continuity in a meaningful sense if you can’t communicate with them, wouldn’t agree with them on anything even if we could, and couldn’t even find a common activity to do together. They’d be about as alien as a green man from Mars. But it doesn’t matter, because you’re not going to convince people to stop idealising ancestors.
This is true of some languages which have a high rate of change, such as English, but much less true of others. As a native Persian speaker for example, I can read the Shahnameh (Book of Kings) of Ferdowsi, which was written around 980 (very much contemporary of Beowulf), and understand about 95% of it. Nearly every literate Iranian would be able to read it without an issue, and at most modern prints have footnotes to explain the words which have fallen out of use.
Not every language changes at the rate English does.
> I meant to say that this idea that the people 1000 years ago being “my people” doesn’t hold up to close inspection.
I think what you're saying is absolutely true, and a better example would be culture in general. There's a certain continuity in the cultural practices of a people in a certain region, with religion being one of the most resilient... but also other things like food, music and, of course, language.
However, all of those change over time. It's funny for me that the Americans of today would almost certainly consider the Americans of the 1950's a bunch of racists and homophobes. A culture can change over time so much as to be more different in 75 years than when actually compared with that of other countries. The continuity exists but change can be very fast. Look at the culture of any European "country" and you'll see just how much change happens. An extreme example, perhaps: the Swedes of the year 1000 compared with the Swedes of 2000. The people inhabiting what we call Sweden today were Vikings back then. I don't believe they had a concept of Sweden yet, as a country, though the regions around Stockholm (which didn't exist yet) and Uppsala (a small region which later grew far North and South to form Sweden proper) seem to have already had a sort of cultural identity (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians). These people were raiders and conquerors - they may have founded the Kievan Rus state and served as elite guards in the Byzantine Empire, which shows just how much of a bad ass warriors they were. How does present-day liberal, tolerant and egalitarian Swedes relate to their ancestors? If they could meet today, the modern fella would lose their head in no time, literally.
England is also a funny example because one of their defining traits is the cultural continuity of the monarchy. Which, as I understand it, is the main justification for why the monarchy still exists today. A person from Chaucer's time transported to London today would have no trouble figuring out who's the king.
> Geoffrey Chaucer wrote one of the first major works of literature in English, but 99.9% of Englishmen alive today wouldn’t be able to understand a word of it because of how much English has changed.
That is true for Beowulf, but not for Chaucer. If you just read the words in Chaucer, pronouncing them exactly as you would if your were sounding them out, you will be able to understand pretty much the entire thing after at most a few hours practice.
We did this in my freshman English class and it was a lot of fun.
Haha my interface shows the reverse. So I think we are both being played here. Although you flagged me
Likely so it shows you that to make you feel better.
But again you don’t know how these larger meta systems work so I’m guessing … well you get it.
Your account descriptions says "This account is no longer active in protest of Hacker News censorship."
Funny, I've never had a problem with the way this place is moderated. One of us must be getting flagged ("censored") a lot more than the other ... well you get it.
> states ruled from Prague, inhabited largely by Czech speakers, extending to virtually the same territory.
More like two polities which share a capital city, but barely have either a language or a geography in common. The idea that Bohemia is essentially Czechia has no more reliable historical basis than belief that it belongs to Greater Germany, or to Czechoslovakia.
Before the european revolutions in the 19th century, the notion of a national state didn't really exist.
It was more about who controls what. Doesn't mean the actual population of the controlled areas changed much.
To give an example from my country's history, Romania has been divided into 3 provinces until very recent (historically speaking) times.
The first unification happened in 1600 when Michael the Brave, the king of the southernmost province, managed to take control of all 3 for about a year. He didn't proclaim himself king of Romania, he called himself king of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania.
100-150 years earlier, Stephen the Great, the king of Moldavia hit Wallachia militarily several times during his reign... not to conquer it and unify but to place a king friendly to him on the throne.
Pretty sure you can find examples like this in any country's history. Germany and Italy for sure, since they've been divided politically into smaller provinces for a thousand years.
Poland was occupied by Germany during WWII. The people still considered themselves Poles during this time, and the only reason there wasn't a 'Poland' was because of military strength, so it seems silly to say that early 1939 Poland and late 1944 Poland are different countries because of lack of continuity. Certainly, almost all Poles will tell you the country 'began' (it kind of had a soft start) in 966, and not in 1944.
(Note: there was technically the government-in-exile in London, which you could argue maintained continuity, but I don't think it's necessary so I'm leaving that out of this.)
This (and most other examples here) could just as easily be explained by nationalism. specifically nationalist projects to claim a much older heritage for the current nation state, to legitimize the current nation, and to give it a glorious and hard fought past so people will be proud of their country.
Personally I think a lot of the idea of countries having existed 'for a long time' is the result of these nationalist projects that all occured in the 1800 hundreds
I can speak of Poland which had a discontinuity of 123 years. For most practical purposes Poland 1918 was not Poland 1795. It had none of the military alliances nor administrative obligations, just a new country out of nothing.
The only continuity was in the collective mind of people who identified as Polish and grabbed the opportunity to fight and (re-)establish their own country.
Now if you look at the continuity of ideas, it gets pretty philosophical so we could leave it to philosophers... if it wasn't for the fact that people use the ideas to justify wars. I don't have a confident answer for continuity between "being Polish in 1795" and "being Polish in 1918".
Was Iceland a country when it was founded? Or later, with the start of the Icelandic Commonwealth? Did it end being a country after the pledge of fealty to the Norwegian king in 1262?
If it was always a country, then go west. When Eric the Red founded Greenland, was it a European country? Did it become a country? After the Norse died, the Danish-Norwegians still claimed sovereignty, and reestablished a colony. The place is now a constituent country of the Kingdom of Denmark.
Some examples were given as answers, occupations etc. But even when nothing like that happens, in the "continuous" case - a country is still undergoing changes. Laws, language, culture, people, etc are not the same 100s of years later. So even that is kind of a Ship of Theseus type of challenge...
I think non-continuous succession of the same entity comes down to using or grandfathering the law, claiming the same assets, but also honoring liabilities of the predecessor. It's the same as with companies.
Mostly through people still living in the same place remembering the glory days of old. If you look at Poland and Lithuania, which became Poland-Lithuania, which roughly split so that Poland went into Prussia and Lithuania into Russia; where Prussia lasted for 100 years and ended with WW1 where Poland re-emerged and had their common sense of identity enhanced by Hitler almost immediately re-invading, and Lithuania existing as part of the USSR for some additional 100 years before breaking out and doing their own thing.
There's still a cultural identity in these places. The people living in them weren't replaced or relocated, primarily the flag and regent.
And around 50BC with Vercingétorix surrendering to the Romans at Alésia the tide turns and it gets administratively split up largely to ensure they don't come together as a force against the Roman Empire again. Then as the Roman Empire starts showing cracks, various local powers emerge again:
Then "France" itself starts to exist since Clovis I united Franks in 481 and around 511 looks somewhat the same as today again if you squint hard enough:
Middle one's fate is to dwindle, west one will become France, right one will become Germany.
France's shape will then vary a lot through time, alliances, weddings, and battles, sometimes eaten at on the east, west, north, south, but more or less gravitating around the center part.
But then here comes Prussia in 1870, then WW1, then WW2, culminating in the partial occupation then administration of northern and western France between 1940-42 and a literal fork of France leadership and government: France de Vichy led by Pétain in the south east, France Libre led by De Gaulle exiled in London. In theory the Vichy government was also leading occupied the north of France but in practice it was ruled by Germany.
1942 comes and Germany resolves the conundrum by forcefully merging south with north, France de Vichy becomes devoid of any power (not that it had much before, being a satellite state of Germany), France is de facto a part of Germany, essentially leaving only France Libre as an actual French government, which is not even in any part of the territory!
So again, what does "country" means? State? Geography? Leadership? Ancestry? People? There's definitely some ship of Theseus going on along these 2k years, as well as forks, takeovers, infighting, and whatnot. This abridged version only highlights so much as there's much more intricacy to it, reality is incredibly messy, yet somehow "France" going all the way back to Gaul over 2k years carries some sense.
At no point was all of modern India under one administrative entity until modern India. Even British India wasn’t one state, it was a patchwork of provinces governed by the British and Princely States. Modern India only came into being in 1948, when the Princes were gently persuaded to take a hike.
But you’re right in the broader sense, that Indian people feel that India has been around for longer even if it hasn’t. That is arguably more important to keeping the nation together than anything else.
The Maurya empire lasted 137 years and the Gupta empire for 148 years and their reigns were not one after the other but were 500 years apart.
Now depending how you're counting, and your definition of empire the Roman empire had a continuous history (with radical transformations over time but nevertheless continuous) for 2000 years.
But hey, it all depends on how you define things. Undoubtedly the Indian subcontinent produced an incredibly deep and rich cultural history that spanned thousands of years.
It was just slightly more fractured and dynamic. The Romans objectively held their firm (and often brutal) hold on a lot of land for a lot of time with a continuous identity, in a way that is not just to say that the same common culture continued on across various political arrangements that changed over time. Because I'd that's what we're talking about we could say that the whole of Europe has a kind of cultural union (fostered by the shared religion) that continued on till today.
But the details of how you define things matter of course. Today you wouldn't consider the byzantine empire to be the Roman empire, but ask somebody from the 1300s living somewhere in the aegean see or anatolia and they will tell you they were Romans.
That's also not really true. It included large parts of south India, including present day states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh etc. It only did not include the southern tip.
I mean, most of the Roman Empire wasn’t controlled by Rome for most of Rome’s history. Particularly towards the end (it went on for about a thousand years after they lost Rome), Rome was more of a _concept_ than anything else.
I guess if we're talking about the Indus Valley Civilization[1] we're looking at a range of 700-2000 years based on how you define the start and end, but even that cannot be considered as equivalent to "India" which was formed as the union of multiple princely states around the general region after the end of colonial rule.
the point is that you can have a single die that cuts XVIIIII, and use it iv times and get what you need for I II III IIII V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII
this is not for modern manufacturing of millions, it's for one at a time clockmaking in a little shop, for which it's a pretty efficient way to accomplish the task and doesn't require keeping an inventory
> you can have a single die that cuts XVIIIII, and use it iv times
To be a bit more explicit, you use the the die four (4) times, and get 4 Xs, 4 Vs, and 4*IIIII = 20 Is, which is exactly right for I II III IIII V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII. Using IV would mean a 5 Vs, but only 4 Xs, and 17 Is, so you couldn't cut a full set with a single die without using a much larger die (= more work making and using the die) or having extra pieces (= wasted material) left over.
In most serif typefaces, one of the glyphs is significantly thicker than the other, and they don't meet exactly at 50% height. If one rotates the letter X 180 degrees, it would look out of place.
I recall seeing IIII in my Cicero class and expressing confusion, but being informed by the professor that said style was more common historically.
The Wikipedia citation for 9 is Commentarii de bello Gallico (Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War), which interestingly comes from around the same timeframe (first century BC, toward the end of the Roman Republic).
One cool thing about the purely additive notation is that you can then add numbers together by just gathering up all their characters, sorting largest to smallest, and combining any groups of 5 or more.
In the marketplace it was difficult to quickly discriminate between IIII and III as compared with II and III. When you get to 4, you have to start counting whereas with 3 or fewer, you can tell how many there are at a glance. That being said, this change was something that happened later in its history and as mentioned was more heavily done in specific use cases.
I think most clocks and watches would have the numerals engraved directly into the face, and if they were separate pieces as on a tower clock they would be either be engraved by hand or with a pantograph, but probably not engraved at all but cut out from a sheet. In any case I don't see how your method creates any meaningful economies of scale — if anything four 'I's requires _more_ material than an 'IV.'
IMHO there's an obvious reason not mentioned: due to their position on the dial and convention IV and VI would typically be depicted upside down, increasing the likelihood of confusing them—particularly with a semi-literate populace.
Indeed - I have always thought (though I don't know if I was told this or just made it up) that IV was used, in general, over IIII because the latter could easily be mistaken for III, but as clock numerals are on a circle, dividing it into four equal quadrants, having a numeral of any sort gives very little additional information over a simple dots, pips or tick marks.
So why use a numeral at all? Well, there's always those people who will think that it is obviously wrong not to have numbers on a measuring instrument. Also, in early modern times, clocks were expensive items and expected to be ornate, especially as they were not all that good at keeping time.
I wonder how much Roman numerals are even taught any longer. Maybe 5 years ago now I was traveling with a friend who went to a solid US suburban high school outside of a major city. Younger than me but certainly not young. And she asked me what a date written in Roman numerals was in the numbering system we normally use. I was somewhat floored.
Thinking about it though. It sort of is cultural/historical trivia. How many hours do you spend in school drilling how Roman numerals are constructed rather than teaching something else. I suppose it's nice enough for those who encounter them when traveling. But pretty far on the not-essential end of the axis.
I'd say it's good to be exposed to for a short few lessons at a young age. My friends and I found endless fascination with them and enjoyed inventing our own numbering systems. It helped a lot when I had to think in other bases like binary or hexadecimal, because my perspective had been broadened by roman numerals.
But I'd say maybe not waste too much time on it. Kids will play with whatever they play with, you can lead them to water but cannot make them drink. We just happened to enjoy playing with number systems, and it helped a lot that our school introduced us to several for us to play with initially.
I taught my son a senary method for similar reasons, and also because hexagons are the bestagons. 12s are quite useful not only for time telling (since they give a nice number of ways to divide an hour) but also for evenly splitting the musical octave, and for counting with flesh between knuckles on one hand.
We do base twelve in our household. It's easier to hold in my head than base thirty-six.
Edit: I was halfway joking but I'm noticing that the 12-hour clock is very elegantly conveyed using base-36 hand gestures. The "hands" of the clock bring in this case literal human hands.
It is certainly good to learn, that there _are_ different number systems. Such knowledge can only serve to potentially at some point spark ideas. I see roman numbers as related to a unary system for example. In computer stuff we learn about binary, octal, and hexadecimal representation too (even if they are something else to decimal system than roman numbers are to it). It will not hurt mathematical ability and thought to know such things.
The most important use for teaching Roman numerals that I see is learning that bad abstractions (here: a number system) can be made to work, but they still suck. The solution is to find better abstractions. Maybe it inspires curiosity in how (well) modern maths works.
> bad abstractions (here: a number system) can be made to work, but they still suck
The only really bad thing about Roman numerals is non-positionality, and it kinda follows naturally from them being merely transcriptions of the states of the 5+2-beads abacus that was popular back then. If only the norm back then were the 10-beads abacus... alas, the history is what it is.
Indian numbers seem almost as messy as Roman numerals though.
Verbally, the system seems to go thousand -> lakh -> crore -> thousand crore -> lakh crore, but then stop there, rarely extending to crore crore or inducting any farther.
Meanwhile commas don't seem to follow the verbal convention - instead showing up every two digits even after a crore, so a thousand crore looks more like ten hundred crore, and a lakh crore looks more like ten hundred hundred crore.
My GF works in schools here in the UK. According to her a lot of kids can't read analogue clocks any more because they all check the time on their phones.
In her opinion it's probably partly related to Covid too because although they do still teach it in school (at least here in the UK), there's a cohort of kids who missed a lot of basic stuff like this during lockdowns. So I think here in the UK kids around the age of 11-12 really struggle with this specifically because roman numerals and analogue clocks is something they typically would learn around the age of 7-8.
I don't know about now, but ~25 years ago when I was in kindergarten one the things they focused on teaching was telling time and reading clocks, which came with reading Roman numerals.
Reading analog clocks was a pretty basic life skill, even for a young kid back then. To which, as you say, Roman numerals were often at least an adjunct. (Having said that I have no idea when I learned Roman numerals.)
Hrm, _are_ they actually taught rigorously somewhere? I mean, I assume you’d be exposed to them if you studied Latin, and I vaguely remember them being used as an example of a non-positional number system in maths, but other than that my only real exposure to them was the BBC (BBC TV shows used to show the date they were produced in Roman numerals, for reasons I was never particularly clear on.)
I was taught about Roman numerals in school (mid-90s) but it was a brief thing, maybe a few homework assignments in a larger unit about Roman history. Certainly not hours of drilling. I can read a clock fine, and I can read a date if I spend some time thinking it through. But it's not really a life skill.
Not remembering the details, but learning it in the 70s or so, I can look at a Roman date and not immediately grasp the year in terms I'm more familiar with but I can decode it in 10 seconds or so. I assume there was a fair bit of drilling if I remember after all this time. But then I had a couple years of Latin too.
I don't think they are taught widely, but that's because their use is fairly niche and they are easy to learn in any case. There are lots of fields where you not get by easily without knowing them or at least figuring them out for yourself. Historians and lawyers come to mind, for example.
Hollywood used to use a Roman copyright year as well. The rumor I heard was that it was intended to obfuscate the time of production so that audiences would think they are seeing new work.
Having been amused by the headlined tiny factlet about clock faces when I was a child, I observe that the pseudish BBC copyright declaration system is, apart from the odd regnal number in law citations and apart from 19th century hymnals, pretty much my only significant exposure to Roman numerals through my entire life.
The last time I even saw a clock face with Roman numerals, it was when clearing the house of a person who had died.
The HHGTTG in the 1980s was sarcastic about digital watches being thought a pretty neat idea by humans, but they have definitely caught on. I have three clocks within view right now as I type this, one on an answer 'phone, and they are all digital readouts. None of them has an analogue option.
Fun fact: The pseudish BBC copyright declaration system did not begin until the middle 1970s. Before then, copyright years were in Indian numerals. In contrast to all of the earlier discussion on this page about the age and length of the Roman Empire, this particular practice post-dates the U.K.'s accession into the EEC and the U.K.'s conversion to decimal coinage.
Another fun fact: It isn't solely the BBC, in fairness. ITV companies did this back then, too. Granada's Crown Court has Roman numerals in the copyright year in its end credits, for just one example.
I collect watches, and I have examples of various types (diver, pilot, etc, etc). The only thing I don't have is any watch with Roman Numerals, I don't like the way they look.
That said I have a bunch of analog clocks around my flat, and zero digital ones. It's actually been kinda fun watching our child learn to tell the time:
With an analog clock he pretty quickly understood the idea that one rotation of the seconds-hand meant a minute moved, and when the minute hand went all the way round the clock it was another hour.
But digital time? He didn't understand how something went from 19:59 to 20:00, for example. So he'd always say "Daddy what the clock is?"
(Finnish is is native tongue, he speaks to me in English, but some of the phrasing is obviously "I translated this in my head".)
I sometimes use a digital wristwatch just to mix things up and I have a tough time sometimes translating how long to wait for pasta to cook - on an analog face, 11 minutes is easy to represent visually, but with a digital I have to do math in my head.
I have one digital watch, the Casio F-91W, along with a mechanical "jump hand" watch, which shows the time using a pair of rotating wheels which have digits written on them. Kinda cute, but also a little hard to read in low-light.
I admit I've used the rotating bezel of a diving-watch to time cooking more often than for timing dives. They're very practical for that!
You need a microwave oven like mine, with the apparently-by-design feature (mentioned as an aside in a Technology Connections video some years ago, as I recall) that one can program the seconds up to 99. 11 minutes is 10:60 . (-:
> I have three clocks within view right now as I type this, one on an answer 'phone, and they are all digital readouts. None of them has an analogue option.
It is at least simple to have an analogue clock face on iPhones, albeit with a digital one too - can't resist sharing screenshot considering what my next calendar appointment happens to be... https://i.ibb.co/0JgJL0p/IMG-3479.jpg (no it doesn't take 15 minutes, but is needed once a week - it's a very old clock.)
I had heard that IV might be considered sacrilegious, as the god Jupiter would have once been spelled IVPPITER, as I was used for modern J and V for modern U.
There is a similar thing with Hebrew numerals¹ where 15 and 16 are usually written as תו and תז to avoid what would otherwise be forms of the name of God.
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1. The Hebrew numeral system, like the Greek numeral system is an almost-decimal system in that different letters are used for each of the different values, but the letters change by place value as well as by their individual value, so, e.g., 21 is written כא where כ stands for 20 and א stands for 1.
Interesting. I wonder if this is related to how Germans count/pronounce numbers. 21 in your example is "einundzwanzig" in German (or "ein-und-zwanzig", "one-and-twenty")
D’oh that’s what I get for trusting my mediocre Hebrew keyboarding skills. For those who don’t know the Hebrew alphabet, both ת and ט are commonly transcribed as T (the former often as TH, but it’s meant to be a German aspirated T sound rather than the English th).
The only Japanese number form change I’m aware of is a special form for one (一) (and possibly two 二) to prevent them from being altered on checks into three (三), but I’m far from an expert.
This is the same explanation I was given. In Roman times it was common to only write the first few letters of a word, just enough to be able to extrapolate the full word from the context. IV was a common abbreviation for IVPPITER.
Sandi Toksvig made the point in a QI episode that if you use IIII, you get a pleasing symmetry with the number of Vs and Xs on a clock face. Four numbers with only Is, four numbers with a V and four numbers with a X.
I'd be surprised if that was the reason, but it's kind of neat.
If Roman numerals are printed around the perimeter of the clock face with the base of each numeral on the same circle, as opposed to printing the numerals horizontally, then the numerals towards the bottom are harder to read because they are nearly upside down. This makes it harder to distinguish quickly between IV and VI. One solution is to use IIII instead of IV.
Fun fact: in Roman numerals there is no standard way to write numbers above 3999. There are basically two competing camps for how to write them. One with C's and backwards C's acting kinda like parens and one with lines over the letters.
On the other hand, they had semi-standard numerals for all sorts of odd fractions like 1⁄288 = ℈.
I've always thought the "well balanced and looks better" was the simplest and most likely of the theories out there on why the IIII is used. Dials that use IV just look funny to me, but perhaps that's simply because they're rare.
It's unclear to me when the (now standard) subtractive form became the standard; there are examples in Roman times of e.g. IIX for 8, and VIIII for 9, both of which would be non-standard today.
It’s more the case that the world is big and communication used to be slow. So regional variations would develop. Sometimes becoming their own language, given enough time.
It’s easy to forget how hard it is to standardise a large populous given everything these days can be shared at near-to-light-speed but even today you have regional slang. Terms that might be common in the north of a country but alien to southerners.
So I find it entirely believable that there were multiple “standards” for Roman numerals that spanned different regions and periods of time.
Even thinking of this as regional variations developing is superficial and wrong. There likely was not a single central standard to splinter in the first place. Framing this in terms of modern concepts like centralized government-backed standards that get communicated out is a mistake.
The reality is far more likely that the notations IIII and IV were equivalent, to any numerate person of the era; and if asked about what the difference is their response would likely be the same as a modern person being asked about the two glyphs for "a" and "g" in many English alphabet typefaces (or even the various open and closed glyphs that Indian numeral "4" can have). They are so used to the forms that they don't even register a difference that is glaring to outsiders, let alone consider one to be "wrong" and the other "right".
>So I find it entirely believable that there were multiple “standards” for Roman numerals that spanned different regions and periods of time.
That indeed seems to be the case. Apparently it largely standardized at some point in the Middle Ages as usage was decreasing. Although I can't find a reference, it's logical to assume given the timeframe and place that the Church probably had something to do with the standardization whether formally or otherwise.
I knew that both forms were common because I was lucky enough to have a Latin teacher who assigned as extra credit "write this number in Roman numerals" and also accepted additive notation for this reason. He even argued that IIIIIIIIII could be a valid if cheesy alternative to X based on very early texts, but this might have just been a bluff. I never tried to write 123 as IIIII...III.
I like the literacy explanation. If reading letters was hard enough for enough people, why add extra complexity by introducing a subtractive system? But as the populous becomes more educated and there’s less concern about reading ability, it makes sense that the next domino to fall is “boy those 4 i’s in a row sure are hard to distinguish”. Complexity gets progressively introduced — that to me sounds like lots of tech adoption curves.
> ...the Roman numeral system changed to the more familiar subtractive notation. However, this was well after the fall of the Roman Empire.
This contradicts examples that Wikipedia has of subtractive notation during the height of the Roman Empire (though it's not clear to me when "IV" became the accepted standard form).
My dad has fixed old pendulum and wind up clocks for years as a hobby. He also fixes old tube radios. There are half a dozen to a dozen clocks around his house at any time. Some have IIII and some have IV. I can't say I've seen one more than another.
As kibwen said, there wasn't a clear "standardized" form. Most rules were invented much later. "IC" was perfectly understood by Romans that would have used "MXMII" without a second thought.
The reason of "IIII" is of usability for clocks that can be seen from different angles. Six can only be written as "VI" so "IV" is changed to "IIII" to prevent confusion.
Of course there are all kind of urban legends and fake stories of kings requesting the number be written this or that way.
In case someone doesn't know, a fun fact: "I" is one finger, "V" represent the open hand (think pinky and thumb in angle) and "X" both open hands united. So 1, 5, 10.
I still remember vividly how I once wrote IIII instead of IV in an outline numbering at school and my teacher was furious about it and basically told me I was stupid for writing it that way.
So glad these days are over.
I'm sorry this happened to you. Sadly, the days of stupid and abusive teachers are far from over.
I think you're focusing on the wrong thing here. If it hadn't been Roman numerals it would have been something else.
Teachers are much the same as cops. Some go into those fields because they genuinely want to help people. Other go into them because they enjoy having power.
This shouldn't be surprising given that even orthography and names were often not standardized consistently for most of history.
For example, Adolf Hitler's grandfather was called Hiedler, not Hitler and the spelling change was the result of his father's name, Alois Hitler, being changed later in his life after first being recorded as Aloys Schicklgruber (the family name being that of his mother rather than father as the fatherhood was apparently initially contested).
Or for orthography you just need to look at any historical text pre-19th century or so and you'll find plenty of oddities that often change regionally or even between writers in the same region.
Now expand this to the time scale and area of the Roman Empire/Republic and it's amazing most of it was somehow coherent over time. Actually as far as I recall, the "subtractive" style was only used consistently in the Middle Ages. Another odd variant I've seen is "IIX" instead of "VIII". And let's not talk about how larger numbers were represented or shenanigans like the "long I" instead of "II".
That was a quick escalation to Hitler - just goes to prove Godwin's law! :)
I didn't realize the subtractive style really dates to the middle ages, but that certainly seems consistent with the coins - I checked a bunch more and none seem to use it.
As far as I know the subtractive style was in use in Rome but the purely additive one was more widely used until the Middle Ages. There are also examples where multiplicatives are used but the only thing I can find on Wikipedia is an example from the Middle Ages: "XIII. M. V. C. III. XX. XIII" (13573 = 13x1000 + 5x100 + 3x20 + 13) and a medieval one using superscript: XV ^C XIX (15x100 + 10 + 9)
As for the Hitler one: he just happens to be a widely known person with a family name that changed not so long ago. Plus I actually first learned this from someone joking about whether he'd have been as successful if his father had never changed his name from Schicklgruber. Fun fact: "Hitler" was officially supposed to be pronounced with a long "i" (ee) like Hiedler but apparently Hitler didn't like this pronunciation and suppressed it once in power.
In Latin, sometimes numbers have synonyms, like 18 (two from twenty or eight and ten). In my mind, the Roman system was very obvious. Then I learned to read a little French, and had genuine curiosity about the reasoning behind this soixante-dix-neuf character.
edit: sometimes I wonder if arithmetic arose simply from naming numbers
I never can decide, but I think you have made the correct point. For me, it was "four twenties, nine and ten", which was only funny because one said "sixty, nine and ten". I dunno, I love it and it terrifies me.
The first time I went abroad, I was in a wine caveau and paying the teller. When she said the price, my mind went blank -- pitch black. She said "five" impatiently in every language I spoke -- even latin -- and I kept wondering, yes, but what and five?
Surprised I had to go down this far to find this. Clockmaker's 4 / watchmaker's 4 is an aesthetic or balance thing more than a historical vestige. Source: own an Omega De Ville Hour Vision
It's odd that they still use IX though, since that is indistinguishable from inverted XI (IV and VI, by contrast, are distinguishable even after rotation).
When talking about wrong usage of Roman numbers, the first that comes to mind is a well known, and much copied, tattoo that writes 1975 not as MCMLXXV.
I learned Roman numbers in school when I was nine. For me being interested in math it was logical that 4 consecutive symbols are against the rules and it needs to be IV.
When I was 14 my grandmother died we got an old clock and it showed IIII. I came to the conclusion it's a poor piece of craftsmanship, the clockmaker just did not know math. Otherwise clocks with Roman numbers were not common at all where I lived.
The old clock is still in my living room over 40 years later (not in a prominent place, I don't find it impressive anymore like I did when I was younger). When reading this I notice that numbers on the lower half are upside down. Had not paid attention to this for over 40 years.
I would like a citation on that. The only people reading books with abbreviations at the time would have academics, simply because we didn’t have the printing press yet and books were scarce. Scarce enough that there would be almost nowhere needing an abbreviation in the first place.
It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just that we lost a lot of knowledge when the Mud Flood destroyed the Tartarian Empire. That’s why we don’t know how to build giant mechanical public clocks any more, and everything is digital clocks now.
Using "IIII" instead of "IV" isn't even necessarily wrong. Rome was a big empire with a widely-distributed populace that lasted for a thousand years. The usage of numerals changed over time and according to context:
"While subtractive notation for 4, 40 and 400 (IV, XL and CD) has been the usual form since Roman times, additive notation to represent these numbers (IIII, XXXX and CCCC)[9] continued to be used, including in compound numbers like 24 (XXIIII),[10] 74 (LXXIIII),[11] and 490 (CCCCLXXXX).[12] The additive forms for 9, 90, and 900 (VIIII,[9] LXXXX,[13] and DCCCC[14]) have also been used, although less often. The two conventions could be mixed in the same document or inscription, even in the same numeral. For example, on the numbered gates to the Colosseum, IIII is systematically used instead of IV, but subtractive notation is used for XL; consequently, gate 44 is labelled XLIIII."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numerals#Origin
As for clock faces, the explanation that I always heard was that it simplified the manufacturing process to use IIII rather than IV; something about making better use of materials to have one fewer V and one more I.