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Fix English.
meisterluk
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Which modern, spoken languages do not imply the decimal number system?

Rationale: While writing a document about foundations of computer science and describing that a number is a sequence of digits, I was wondering about our relation to the decimal system.

In English counting goes like this: "one", "two" and "three". If we create a number with 2 digits, the number might be called "forty-two". "Forty" is an alias for 4‧101 and "two" adds 2‧100. So it refers explicitly to the decimal system, because neither "forty-two" nor "ten" exists in binary1. The language uses decimal-based aliases. "Dreizehn" (3+10 = 13) and "quatre-vingt trois" (4*20+3 = 83) are instances of the same concept in German and French.

Cerberus has pointed out that Aztecs and Babylonians have used different number systems from the very beginning which of course became part of the spoken language (radix 20 and 60). A nice hint, but I am interested in modern, spoken languages.

My question: Which modern, spoken languages do not imply the decimal system2? I would be happy to be able to find 2 to that kind.

A related question is How do you pronounce numbers written in different bases?


1: It might be a valid point that "ten" is an alias for 1‧101 + 0‧100 and therefore "ten" can also be applied to the binary system with 102 = 210, but that is pretty uncommon and I am not sure about it. Correct me if I am wrong. See related link.

2: With "language without the implication" I mean "the pronunciation of a number is only a concatenation of the pronunciation of the individual digits".

meisterluk
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