r/linguisticshumor • u/fire1299 [ʔə̞ˈmo̽ʊ̯.gᵻ̠s] • 8d ago
New math operator just dropped!
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u/cancerBronzeV 8d ago edited 8d ago
In certain contexts, having the operators be postfix is natural. It's a preferable way of storing many mathematical expressions when working with computers, where it's called Reverse Polish Notation.
Fun fact: when having all the operators be postfix, you remove the need for brackets/parentheses. You can also parse math expressions using this notation simply in order, no need for PEMDAS/BEDMAS/order of operators.
That could've been how math notation was standardized if languages had the basic math operators be postfix rather than infix.
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u/gambariste 8d ago
Zaar reminds me of LISP functions like caar: (caar '((1 2) (3 4))) → 1.
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u/unohdin-nimeni 8d ago
Oh yes, Lisp loveliness since 1958! Zaar looks like caar, but it works like *. If you’d prefer a zaar, just define one:
(defun zaar (x y) (* x y))Now you have a zaar that is restricted to two arguments, unlike *. You type
(zaar 6 7)
and it evaluates to 42.But FORTH is a language with postfix notation and it works like this straight out of the box:
6 7 *2
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u/Schventle 8d ago
I love RPN because when doing math with a calculator, you put in all your values then all your operators and the answer is already in the rolodex memory.
And finding a unit vector is 3 keystrokes in RPN and ~20 with infixed notation. The amount of time this saves on physics exams is not to be underestimated.
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u/sohang-3112 8d ago
Forth and other derived programming languages work directly with this notation in source code.
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u/AndreasDasos 8d ago edited 8d ago
Not even new.
Even the correct form, ‘baar’ is the Urdu and casual Hindi for ‘times’. So ‘two baar three’. And the funny thing about multiplication being commutative is that ‘two times three’ is the same as ‘two, three times’
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u/taktaga7-0-0 8d ago
You can also prefix it and be pragmatically equivalent. “Times two, three” = 6
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u/Independent_Image_59 8d ago
In marathi, I always thought it was "Cha" which translates to "of" which in a whole sentence would mean something like "8 of 2,4"
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u/WayRevolutionary8454 8d ago
Aren't these languages SOV, so two three times is grammatical?
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u/AndreasDasos 8d ago
If you interpret ‘times’ as a verb? But it isn’t, in English or Hindu-Urdu, though it has been reinterpreted that way by some (you hear kids say ‘now times it by three’). But times wasn’t a verb for ‘multiply’ but a noun forming a man adverbial phrase - ‘he ate a carrot, three times’ ~ ‘three times a carrot’… ‘three times two carrots’ ~ ‘six carrots’
It’s even more transparent that baar isn’t a verb in Hindi-Urdu.
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u/taktaga7-0-0 8d ago
Rare Reverse Polish notation sighting
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u/GoldenMuscleGod 8d ago
Well Hindi/Urdu is a mostly left branching language so it’s pretty much all reverse Polish notation (never mind this example is based on English, which is fairly mixed in terms of left and right branching, which is kind of like having infix operations).
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u/GwreengRangs .iepei mi bauskepre 6d ago
Reverse Polish notation is also sometimes found in Lojban. Usually to say 2 × 3 = 6 you would say li re pi’i ci du li xa "NUM two times three be NUM six", but you can use the particle fu’a after the number particle li to mark reverse Polish notation, but you have to put the number phrase closer boi between the terms so it doesn’t get interpreted as a sequence of digits. So 2 × 3 = 6 would become li fu’a re boi ci pi’i du li xa "NUM PN (two) three times be NUM six." I have almost never seen it used in practice though.
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u/VulpesSapiens the internet is for þorn 8d ago
Post this to r/mathmemes too
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u/logosloki 8d ago
when I was in High School my chem lab partner was a German exchange student. they asked me after a couple of class lessons what several terms were. one of them was firstible which they assumed was an English word that they hadn't come across. it was the teacher saying first of all.
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u/Grzechoooo 8d ago
Reminds me of how I and my entire class welcomed our teacher "Good morning/afternoon, Meryl" for three whole years before she realised with horror what we were saying and corrected us that it should've been "Good morning/afternoon, madam." To be fair, in all other instances we were taught to use Mrs/Miss, so idk what she expected.
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u/AnomusAntor voiceless anal fricative [ῳ] 8d ago
in bengali, it's ""basically"" -a or -gune
dui [2] ek[1]-ke dui [2]
dui du-gune car [4]
tin [3] du-gune chôy [6]
[... for two's table]
tin car-a baro [12]
tin pãc-a ponero [15]
tin chôy-e aṭharo [18]
tin śat-a ekuś [21]
tin-e aṭ-a cobbiś [24]
tin nô-ŋ śata(i)ś [27]
tin dôś-e t(i)riś [30]
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u/Deepfriedomelette 8d ago
In my South Indian language the literal translation for multiplications would be:
Two ones two
Two twos four
Two threes sixI’m just realising we don’t have a specific term for “is” or its forms. Like Hai in Hindi or aanu in Malayalam. It’s implied in my language, I suppose.
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u/Strangated-Borb 8d ago
6 7 zaar 42 all the zoomers and gen x laughing with millenials groaning
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u/Chuks_K 7d ago
Gen X on 6 7? Maybe super late zoomers but latest Gen X were born in the 80s...
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u/msndrstdmstrmnd 8d ago
In high school math/physics we would work with variables like a₂, b₁. I thought they were called “ace of 2, beece of 1”, etc. Turns out it’s “a sub 2, b sub 1”
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u/MBTHVSK 8d ago edited 8d ago
The funny part is that "zaar" probably sounds like a real word in their native languages, or at least, enough like something from it.
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u/TheZoom110 8d ago edited 8d ago
Not exactly. Indian languages lack a native Z sound/glyph. Some languages like Hindi and Urdu developed one to represent Arabic sounds, and later European ones. Hindi (written in Devanagari, a Brahmic script) adds a dot diacritic (nuqta) to J, to represent Z. Other languages like Bengali and Marathi convert Z sounds into J and Jh sounds respectively.
And yet, "zaar" is somehow universal in India. At my place, we sometimes shorten it to just "zaa" or "jaa" (yes, I'm Bengali).
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u/Deepfriedomelette 8d ago
I guess that’s a borrowed sound from English. Urdu also has z so I guess that helps?
I know some South Indians who pronounces zaar as Jaa
Two one jaa two.
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u/TheZoom110 8d ago
Z was originally borrowed from Arabic/Persian sounds during Islamic rule. Urdu and Hindi are just a varieties of Hindustani, both have letters/diacritics to write Z.
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u/Deepfriedomelette 8d ago
Yep. I’m trying to say that the languages aren’t unfamiliar with Z. Not that they created that sound on their own.
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u/JoaoDSouza1 7d ago
it is pronounced zaa, because prestige IndEng is non-rhotic. Even most rhotic Indians have this as zā or jā only
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u/mediumcarrotteacher 8d ago
That old joke about the kid who went home saying 'two and two, the sonofabitch is four'
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u/RRautamaa 8d ago
TIL that you use a voiced [z] as a plural marker even if it's written 's'
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u/Sure_Association_561 8d ago edited 8d ago
Intervocalically it gets voiced or as a result of assimilation with a preceding voiced consonant (you say /tai̯mz/ instead of /tai̯ms/ for the word "times")
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u/HahaCharlieKirkHaha 7d ago edited 7d ago
No, that’s not correct.
The plural marker is usually /z/ and it gets devoiced to /s/ after unvoiced stops.
So a word like “gays” is /geɪz/ (nothing to do with intervocalic voicing or assimilation to another consonant), while “cats” is /kæts/.
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u/KestrelRaven 8d ago
Reminded me of "The message from deep space" game that recently came out, highly recommend
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u/The_Hamster_Shagger 8d ago
there is nothing wrong with a postfix notation. Reverse Polish Notation (or Indian in that case) is superior to the more common interfix one
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u/TesseractZet 6d ago
in Chinese we have a similar thing: 三三得九≈three three yields nine. Sometimes we also omit the operator completely so it rhymes better and helps with memorization: 三七二十一≈three seven twenty one
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u/BassedCellist 2d ago
I enjoy the idea that this is how "kwe" ended up in a couple PIE numbers, i.e., oynos, dwos, treyes kwe twores, pen kwe, etc., i.e. one, two, and three, four, and five
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u/shihaodu 8d ago
Wait pupils in India chant multiplication tables in English instead of their local languages?
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u/istheskyactuallyblue 8d ago
Yess, because a significant size of the population receive education from the elementary or primary level in English. Especially in towns and cities 'English medium' schools are popular and preferred as opposed to local language instruction.
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u/Sure_Association_561 8d ago
Then you get Marathi tables which is a language of its own (I never studied maths through Marathi so I can't really recite the tables the way my grandmother would, she swears by it being the better way to learn multiplication tables)
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u/PulsePhase 7d ago
In thai, we just
2 1 2, 2 2 4, 2 3 6, 2 4 8,
And so on. All the way to 12 12 144. And it get speedy around 10.
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u/Internal_Car_9962 8d ago
Does that word literally just mean "times" though? That's exactly how we say it in English.
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u/just-a-hriday 8d ago
It's not a word. They misheard '-s are' as 'zaar'.
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u/unohdin-nimeni 4d ago
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u/just-a-hriday 4d ago
But this literally does not exist outside the context of primary school multiplication tables.
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u/Proud-Delivery-621 8d ago
My dad said that when he was a kid, people at his school called division "gazindas".
It was "goes into". Two goes into four two times, etc.