[Ankesh]

Originally Posted by Carol

And you dear Ankesh can not leave your puzzle unsolved.
You've piqued my curiosity...I would love to know just
what is the meaning behind the numeric symbols?
Carol

Thanks for asking Carol
I'll try to answer the puzzle in a round-about fashion - because I think it'll make more sense that way. It may get a bit looong though.

But before that, let me answer Jim.

Originally Posted by James Anthony

Oh, geeze, not this. They're numbers - just numbers - nothing more - nothing less.

Jim - I'm not saying that numbers have magical powers or can predict stuff. They are numbers just as you are a person. But are you just a person - nothing more nothing less?

No. You are made of bones and muscles. Hundred millionss of neurons give you your own unique thought process and identity. There are layers to you that can't be seen - that are hidden.

Similarly, there are layers behind these numbers - hidden meanings. More than what meets the eye.

--Beginning of round-about explanation--

Paul Ekman studied faces. He researched various world cultures and found something that surprised the scientific community at the time. He found that it doesn't matter where people are from, what religion or culture they follow - their facial expressions for corresponding emotions are the same.

A happy person in USA will have the same look as a happy person in the forests of Amazon.

Cultures have very little influence on our facial expressions.

And similarly, cultures have very little influence on our "tones" too. (Language evolved from tones.)

Originally Posted by MichaelRoss

Certainly, the same can be Asked of words. Why do was say Floor, for example, instead of Wobstan? Why Aqua instead of Ooba? And so on.

If you are bilingual - you'll find that many words sound the same in different languages.

They are not so same that you'll understand the meaning without learning the language. But they use certain same "phonemes." (Phoneme = smallest unit of speech sound.)

For eg: this amazed me when I was doing research on phonemes: Almost all the languages of the world have the phonetic sound |M| in the word mother.

French : Mere
German : Mutter
Hindi : Maji
Urdu : Ammee
English : Mom, Mummy, Mother
Italian: Madre
Portuguese: Mãe
Albanian: Mëmë; Nënë; Burim; Kryemurgeshë
Belarusan: matka
Serbian: Majka
Dutch: Moeder; Moer
Estonian: Ema
Frisian: Emo, Emä, Kantaäiti, Äiti
Greek: Màna
Hawaiian: Makuahine

There are exceptions <bummer>:
Hungarian: Anya, Fu

But the exceptions are few.

Some people call Sanskrit the purest language because each phoneme in Sanskrit has a specific meaning.

In Sanskrit, we find that phoneme |M| stands for "me" or "mine."

Do you now understand why a child's first spoken word is usually "mum" or "maa"?

(The child doesn't understand why s/he uses |M| to call her/his mother - just as we don't understand how our brains work. These facial features as well as phonetic tones are ingrained in our brains from before birth.)

-

Let us look at how numbers sound in 3 different languages:

English - French - Hindi

One - Un - Ek
Two - Deux - Do
Three - Trois - Teen
Four - Quatre - Chaar
Five - Cinq - Paanch
Six - Six - Che
Seven - Sept - Saat
Eight - Huit - Aath
Nine - Neuf - Naw

Can you see the similarities?

(I don't know what each phoneme in each number denote - I haven't done research in that. But it is clear that they do have a hidden meaning.)

(To read more about phonemes and their meanings, go to this website by master linguist Margaret Magnus:
http://www.conknet.com/~mmagnus/
Its very heavy reading - not for everyone. But some people might find it very interesting.)

--

That is the sound of the numbers. But what about the 1-2-3-4? Do they have a story too?

You bet.

Ok - I googled to find a term I could use to explain the numeric-symbols. And I found this site in the process. This site gives a better explanation than I could possibly give:

http://www.geocities.com/rmlyra/Numbers.html

Hope you find this stuff as fascinating as I do.