"La cifero nulo estas la plej bela, ĉu ne?"
Translation:The digit zero is the most beautiful, is it not?
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119
A-vorto fina, laŭ mi, ne taŭgas tie ĉi. Angle ĝi estas „Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything”, kaj la vorto ultimate ne signifas ian finecon, sed grandecon, grandvaloron, fundamentecon.
Esperantlingva Vikipedio diras nur pri „La respondo al la demando pri la vivo, la universo kaj ĉio” (do ignoras tiun vorton), sed aliaj lingvoj tradukas ĝin kiel granda, fundamenta (fr. „La grande question” kaj ger. „Die Große Frage” la granda demando, pol. „Wielkie pytanie” la grandega demando, ĉeĥ. „Základná otázka” kaj it. „Domanda fondamentale” la fundamenta demando), do tiel oni povas diri esperante: kvardek du estas „La respondo al la fundamenta demando pri la vivo, la universo kaj ĉio”.
(Mi komprenas ĝin, sed pardonu mi por respondi en la angla. Mi komencis lerni Esperanton nur antaŭ unu semajno.)
I did originally say "la grand(eg)a demando", because I wrongly remembered the original as "the Great Question", but looking back I wrongly interpreted "la fina respondo" in said Vikipedio article as meaning "the ultimate answer". (instead of "the final answer") Which I thought was a bit weird, but against better judgement I decided to trust in (what was clearly a misinterpretation of) more seasoned speakers.
But which word to use for ultimate here is an interesting debate, in part because "Ulitimate Question" can be interpreted as either the greatest and most important of all questions, or as being the question arrived at right before the end of solving a complicated problem. The question that, once answered, will solve everything.
Doing some more research, I think ĉefa is also a good candidate (defined "plej grava, plej altranga, precipa" or "most important, most high-ranking, principle" in Lernu.net's Eo-Eo dictionary). Or perhaps we could add a "plej", or do something fun with the -eg suffix. (fundamentega demando? ĉefega demando? or perhaps even demandego?)
But anyway, thanks for pointing it out! I'll edit out that embarrassing mistake now. (I'll go with fundamenta. At least for now)
119
Well, who forbids one to consider a number system with base π? :D
Since we're on this, let me mention quater-imaginary system, about which I was quite frustrated to find, that it exists, after inventing similar thing on my own back in the school. ^^
Ne. п estas simbolo kiu reprezentas transcendan nombron.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seUU2bZtfgM
119
Manskribe, jes. Same kiel malsamaj tiparoj prezentas la saman signon alie. Sed ĉikaze temas pri du malsamaj signoj de Unikodo: π (U+03C0) estas litero de la greka alfabeto, uzata i.e. kiel la simbolo de la plej fama matematika konstanto, dum п (U+043F) estas litero de la cirila alfabeto, laŭ mia scio neniel uzata en matematiko.
If it's "nokton" it should be "hundojn". But there's no reason for the accusative, and I'm not sure how units translate from English into Esperanto. After all, it's a 5-pound bag, not a 5-pounds bag. And the band is "Three Dog Night", not "Three Dogs Night". But either way, you've got a stray -n there.
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It would suffice to get rid of the “-n” ending. :)
The English expression “three dog night” meaning “a very cold night, a night so cold that as much as three dogs are needed to keep one’s bed warm” is grammatically constructed with the main noun “night” being described by the “three dogs”, so in Esperanto that could be trihunda nokto (similarly to kvinkilograma sako) or nokto de tri hundoj.
But as far as I know, this idiom isn’t known in other languages so it works well as a translation of the band’s name, but couldn’t be communicatively used in everyday Esperanto.
Forgive me, my Esperanto is not up to this dialogue.
I like zero because I think that its representation is a sublime expression of humanities existence in time and space. Our link to reality is linear. Where we are and what we have is in constant flux. Zero represents that concept in our number systems by preserving a space for the set that currently does not contain a more specific value. Zero says for us, "Watch this space, anything could happen". It is the mathematical expression of human emotions - hope, dread, fear, determination, love, anticipation. Zero is humanity staring into the abyss and saying if the abyss stares back long enough, it becomes us. Very cool.
There are other numbers like pi, e and i that represent numbers relationship to themselves. These numbers give a glimpse both into our world and into the universe of numbers. They are powerful tools some of which have shaped our histories and cultures for all of recorded time. We can't live without them and we can't tell ourselves exactly what they are. They are like the cold eyes of the universe just outside of the campfire's light. They are the threat of the unknown, the lure of stars, and the promise of the moon. They bring us to the edge of the light to stare into those cold eyes and ask if they want to be our friend or a warm layer between us and a harsh world. They remind us to be cautious, and teach us to wish for a wider ring of light. They are the universe reminding us that it ain't done staring back. Zero is a very cool number, but I love a challenge.
Kinda. There is a zero as the total expressed value which represents what you are talking about. Then there is the digit zero which is part of a description of a digit and represents the absence of a value for a particular column. So ten '10' can be expressed as one set of 10's and zero 1's this concept of visually setting a null value is not something that spontaneously occurred. Greek, Romans, all failed. It was a major invention when the concept entered the world and it allowed dramatic advances in mathematics
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Some words just happen to look like they have a suffix or a grammatical marking, when in fact they don't and this part is just a part of the root. It's often used as a basis of Esperanto jokes (koleg·o vs kol·eg·o, damaĝ·o vs dam·aĝ·o, haring·o vs har·ing·o, — Kion diras vespo, kiam ĝi pikas? — Bonan vesperon!).
In this case keep in mind that besides groups of words regularly ending with -o, -a, -e, -aŭ, -i, -is, -as, -us and -u, there's quite a number of words which don't have any ending, including numerals (like unu, which isn't an imperative mood un·u) and many conjunctions (like kaj, which isn't a plural adjective k·a·j). One of those words is plej, which cannot be broken into smaller morphemes.
1390
Just curious, do you form the superlative in Esperanto by using "plej" then the adjective?
10
Just curious: why «nulo» rather than «zero»? At face value the word «nulo» sounds like it should mean "a person characterized by «n»".
119
And zero could be interpreted as z⋅er⋅o, that is “an element, a piece of «z»”. ;)
In Esperanto it's nul basing on the Latin nullus (none) and many words derived from it, meaning “zero” in many different languages: Afrikaans nul, Belarusian нуль (nul′), Bulgarian ну́ла (nula), Chechen нул (nul), Czech nula, Danish nul, Dutch nul, Estonian null, Faroese null, Finnish nolla, Hungarian nulla, Icelandic núll, Karachay-Balkar ноль (nol), Kazakh нөл (nöl), Kyrgyz нөль (nöl’), Latvian nulle, Lithuanian nulis, Malay nol, Northern Sami nolla, Norwegian null, Russian нуль (nul’), Serbo-Croatian нула, nula, Slovak nula, Swedish noll, Tatar ноль (nol’), Tongan noa, Turkmen nol, Ukrainian нуль (nul’), Uyghur نۆل (nöl), Uzbek nol, Võro nulĺ, West Frisian nul and Yiddish נול (nul).
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Touché. I had forgotten about -er-. Fascinating that many of those languages you cite are not latinidaj lingvoj yet still use a latin root to build their word for 0 anyway.
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In the Esperanto translation of the fairy tale “Snow White” by brothers Grimm the question queen asks the mirror is:
Speguleto mia, speguleto hela,
Kiu en la lando estas la plej bela?