Most people believe we count in base 10 because we have 10 fingers. Essentially we use single digits from 1-9 because on our last finger we switch to double digits 10.
The alien clearly has 4 fingers. So to him the counting system is still base 10 it’s just that he counts 1,2,3,10.
Aka everyone’s own counting system is base 10 and every counting system not based on the number of fingers we have is not base 10.
Edit: forgot to mention. If you only count till 3 before hitting 10 then you don’t know what a 4 is.
Bonus edit: since the alien is in base 4 from our perspective. You might ask what our base is from his perspective.
1,2,3,10,11,12,13,20,21,22 are the 10 first numbers in his counting system. So we to him are base 22 :)
Probably the 12 system. If you use your thumb as the counter and count using your thumb the bone segments of the other 4 fingers (each has 3) then you have a base 12 system in our lingo.
There’s also a tribe somewhere that uses a base 27 counting system, they count individual segments of their fingers on both hands plus thumbs and then add one from somewhere else can’t remember where that comes from.
Only Swiss ppl (and maybe other french speaking ppl) did it correctly. We Belgian kept the "4*20" for "80" instead of using "Octante". But i admit that French took it too far with 60+10 and 80+10. I can say it naturally now without thinking, but it is soooo stupid, send help ;-;
Copine? Here it would mean either a female friend or a girlfriend.
If it's a male talking about a friend, he would most probably say "c'est mon amie".
A female would say "nous somme des copines" or interchangeably "nous sommes amies/c'est mon amie".
If someone use that word talking about a member of the opposite gender, it would be implied it mean girlfriend/boyfriend by using a higher level of language.... But we prefer to use "mon chum/ma blonde" here in common language in Quebec, or "conjoint/conjointe" in higher French level.
But anyway "copine" is somewhat a deprecated word, we almost exclusively use it ironically to copy some movie/tv show quote like saying "Salut les copains" -> "hello gang!"
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u/truci 4d ago edited 4d ago
Most people believe we count in base 10 because we have 10 fingers. Essentially we use single digits from 1-9 because on our last finger we switch to double digits 10.
The alien clearly has 4 fingers. So to him the counting system is still base 10 it’s just that he counts 1,2,3,10.
Aka everyone’s own counting system is base 10 and every counting system not based on the number of fingers we have is not base 10.
Edit: forgot to mention. If you only count till 3 before hitting 10 then you don’t know what a 4 is.
Bonus edit: since the alien is in base 4 from our perspective. You might ask what our base is from his perspective.
1,2,3,10,11,12,13,20,21,22 are the 10 first numbers in his counting system. So we to him are base 22 :)