What have you accomplished today?

[alice]

I finally forced myself to start writing my novel, and have nearly finished the first chapter. I'm not sure how much conlanging to put in it, though, nor whether to replicate the base-12 counting system.

Interesting question. English already has words for 12 and 12² at least, so you certainly could without much difficulty. Expressions like "three dozen" are already commonplace after all. Nonetheless it's fair to say that many people will resent having to parse "six gross eleven dozen and four" for "one thousand".

True, but it never gets any worse than "three dozen and six", oe "six and three-zen" in practice.

[Ahzoh]

If one really cared that much you could always put the decimal counterpart in brackets.

[Lērisama]

True, but it never gets any worse than "three dozen and six", oe "six and three-zen" in practice.

I'd find both of those a bit annoying, because 42 says the same a lot more succinctly and without me having to do addition. That said, I would probably put round numbers in dozens, firstly because they're a little easier to translate, and because “there's three dozen of them.” provides better information than either “there's 36,” which is too precice, or “there's 40,” which could be wrong.

[bradrn]

True, but it never gets any worse than "three dozen and six", oe "six and three-zen" in practice.

I'd find both of those a bit annoying, because 42 says the same a lot more succinctly and without me having to do addition.

You have to do addition with 42 too, only you’re more used to it.

[Lērisama]

True, but it never gets any worse than "three dozen and six", oe "six and three-zen" in practice.

I'd find both of those a bit annoying, because 42 says the same a lot more succinctly and without me having to do addition.

You have to do addition with 42 too, only you’re more used to it.

I know, but I'm so used to it I don't think of it as such, which is the point. I have the same problem with German, and the only difference there is transposing the last two digits.

[Travis B.]

It is not uncommon to find languages where for numbers between 20 and 100 or 120 you count with multiples of 20, and regularly counting with multiples of 12 seems no more complex than that (and if 12 is used throughout the number system, it would be more consistent).

[lëtzeshark]

Somewhat belated question: how common is it, in real life, that a banknote contains a caption explaining what it depicts?

Often, banknotes will have captions of at least the names of the people depicted on them, and less commonly (but still not out of the question) if there are buildings and events (or dances, in the case of Indonesian banknotes). Some issuers (e.g., Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Singapore, and the Philippines; previously, also Austria and Croatia come to mind) will describe the motifs more in a bit more detail, but other countries just put the motifs on the note without much description or guidance. I remember being puzzled by what some of the things on the reverses of the old German Mark notes were until I got older. (Well, except the Brandenburger Tor on the DM 5 note; that was pretty recognizable, but I didn't make the connection between the front and back.)

[Moose-tache]

True, but it never gets any worse than "three dozen and six", oe "six and three-zen" in practice.

I'd find both of those a bit annoying, because 42 says the same a lot more succinctly and without me having to do addition.

You have to do addition with 42 too, only you’re more used to it.

Yeah, it's the same math:
"for-ty two" = 4 x 10 + 2
"three-zen six" = 3 x 12 + 6

[Ahzoh]

I'd find both of those a bit annoying, because 42 says the same a lot more succinctly and without me having to do addition.

You have to do addition with 42 too, only you’re more used to it.

Yeah, it's the same math:
"for-ty two" = 4 x 10 + 2
"three-zen six" = 3 x 12 + 6

Yes, kids still had to learn to conceptualize what 4 tens looked like. That's why we were given the counting blocks in school!

Still I would have thought that dozens is a common enough unit that the masses would not struggle too much to parse any number smaller than 144

[Raphael]

Somewhat belated question: how common is it, in real life, that a banknote contains a caption explaining what it depicts?

Often, banknotes will have captions of at least the names of the people depicted on them, and less commonly (but still not out of the question) if there are buildings and events (or dances, in the case of Indonesian banknotes). Some issuers (e.g., Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Singapore, and the Philippines; previously, also Austria and Croatia come to mind) will describe the motifs more in a bit more detail, but other countries just put the motifs on the note without much description or guidance. I remember being puzzled by what some of the things on the reverses of the old German Mark notes were until I got older. (Well, except the Brandenburger Tor on the DM 5 note; that was pretty recognizable, but I didn't make the connection between the front and back.)

Thank you!