Do you understand Roman numerals, e.g. MCMXLIV? La Liseuse' question about time evoked another question. As digital watches, clocks, and digital displays everywhere have largely superseded analog cloc

Se connecter

S'inscrire

Dan Smith

Do you understand Roman numerals, e.g. MCMXLIV?

La Liseuse' question about time evoked another question. As digital watches, clocks, and digital displays everywhere have largely superseded analog clock dials, one of the most common places where Roman numerals were used is being seen less and less. I've noticed that young people hardly understand them.

Were you taught how to interpret and write Roman numerals in school? Or has that been abandoned?

I think the custom of using Roman numerals for the page numbers of introductions and prefaces is declining. I will have to pay attention the next time I watch a movie and see whether they still use Roman numerals for the copyright year in movie credits, e.g. MCMXLIV for 1944.

(M = 1,000; D = 500; C = 100; L = 50; X = 10; V = 5; and I = 1. There is a weird subtractive rule: if a letter for a smaller value precedes one for a large value, it is subtracted. Thus 1900 is MCM, not MDIIII; 40 is XL, not XXXX; and 4 is IV, not IIII. However, many clocks represent 4 as IIII anyway.

11 août 2020 23:41

Commentaires · 6

Great topic as usual, Dan!

Here’s a 30 second clip on how Bart Simpson learned Roman numerals :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exiy5eVMzg4

13 août 2020

Yes, I can read those fine, they were part of the curriculum in my day.

12 août 2020

Roman numerals are studied in Russian religious seminaries in the course of the Latin language.

12 août 2020

I was taught Roman numerals, but I'm middle-aged. I'm also the music librarian for a community band and I've recently been creating a spreadsheet of our music collection that includes the copyright date of each piece, so I've become quite good at converting the Roman numerals on the older pieces. My teenage daughter says they learned Roman numerals in school, but she's only confident of I, V and X combinations. She had to ask me what the values for C and M were and she'd entirely forgotten the existence of L.

12 août 2020