Roman numerals

Latin Learning Latin
1

Could someone with some knowledge of Roman numerals please help me figure out how to say 260972? :confused:

2

Not an easy task considering the Romans didn’t feel they needed a word for anything higher than 1000. ALso using the Basic Roman Numeral system the highest Number possible was 4,999. Romans did use many ways to represent numbers higher, but were all very confusing to use and really didn’t have common mainstream ways of using them.

Using the below table:
M=1000 | D=500 | C=100 | L=50 | X=10 | V=5 | I=1

You can however put a line above the number multiplying it by 1000 however I have no idea how you would pronounce those.

So you could use 2 C’s with Lines over them for 100000
Leaving you with 60972, so 1 L with a line over it would be 50000 leaving you with 10972. 1 X with a line is 10000, 1 D leaves you with 472. So in the end you’d have:

CCLXDCCCCLXXII

I’m not even going to attempt to figure out how to say that.

3

Here are two online Roman Mumeral translators:

1-3899:
http://www.24hourtranslations.co.uk/rnumerals.htm

1 - 4999:
http://www.guernsey.net/~sgibbs/roman.html

4

Those sites are nice and all if you are doing normal Roman Calculations > 5000. As you can see this number is slightly larger than that. Not by much though…

5

Yes, I know. But just in case someone else asks about Roman Numerals, they can come in handy. :slight_smile:

6

Very true! I’ve used them before and they have helped me out alot in the past. Roman Numberals are a pain the ass and i’d rather have a program figure it out for me. I’m still doing research into how that number is said. Unfortunitly I cannot find any words for the bigger numbers.

7

Is this acceptable:
ducenti sexaginta milia nongenti septuaginta duo ?
Or is this a naïve and failed attempt at converting French to something resembling terrible Latin :frowning: ?

8

Thanks for the help, I found this site if you are interested:
http://www2.inetdirect.net/~charta/Roman_numerals.html

Now that I am thoroughly educated about Roman numerals, I must figure out how to use my immense knowledge…

9

bis centena milia sexagena milia nongenti septuaginta duo.

2 * 100000 + 60 * 1000 + 900 + 70 + 2

if I read my grammar right, that is. I’ve only just noted that I’ve got a grammar that does numerals up to 1.000.000.

Ingrid