Random thoughts

[Florestan]

kolmetuhattaseitsemänsataakaksikymmentäyksi

tuhatyhdeksänsataa kaksikymmentäkaksi

kolmekymmentäkaksi miljoonaa viisisataakolmekymmentäneljätuhatta seitsemänsataaviisikymmentäkuusi

My God! Should I ever try to pronounce these monsters, I´m afraid my tongue would break in pieces. 

[North Star]

kolmetuhattaseitsemänsataakaksikymmentäyksi

tuhatyhdeksänsataakaksikymmentäkaksi

kolmekymmentäkaksimiljoonaaviisisataakolmekymmentäneljätuhattaseitsemänsataaviisikymmentäkuusi

My God! Should I ever try to pronounce these monsters, I´m afraid my tongue would break in pieces. 

Corrected the spellings

987,654,321,987:
yhdeksänsataakahdeksankymmentäseitsemänmiljardiakuusisataaviisikymmentäneljämiljoonaakolmesataakaksikymmentäyksituhattayhdeksänsataakahdeksankymmentäseitsemän.

[Florestan]

987,654,321,987:

Romanian: noua sute optezcisisapte de miliarde sase sute cincizecisipatru de milioane trei sute douazecisiuna de mii noua sute optzecisisapte.

(I ommitted the diacritics)

[Jo498]

Neunhundertsiebenundachtzig Milliarden sechshundertvierundfünfzig Millionen dreihunderteinundzwanzigtausendneunhundert(und)siebenundachtzig.

I am actually not quite sure when one starts a new word here, but it seems that everything below a million could in principle be written as one concatenated word. Some "und" (and) insertions are also optional. In the last line I put it in brackets.

[kishnevi]

Corrected the spellings

987,654,321,987:
yhdeksänsataakahdeksankymmentäseitsemänmiljardiakuusisataaviisikymmentäneljämiljoonaakolmesataakaksikymmentäyksituhattayhdeksänsataakahdeksankymmentäseitsemän.

For general purposes, just round it off

Biljoona
Trilion
Billion

[North Star]

tuhat =10^3
kymmenentuhatta = 10^4
satatuhatta = 10^5
miljoona = 10^6
miljardi = 10^9
biljoona = 10^12
triljoona = 10^18
kvadriljoona = 10^24
kvintiljoona = 10^30
sekstiljoona = 10^36
septiljoona = 10^42
oktiljoona = 10^48
noviljoona = 10^54
dekiljoona = 10^60
undekiljoona = 10^66
duodekiljoona = 10^72
tredekiljoona = 10^78
kvattuordekiljoona = 10^84
kvindekiljoona = 10^90
sedekiljoona = 10^96
septendekiljoona = 10^102
duodevigintiljoona = 10^108
undevigintiljoona = 10^114
vigintiljoona = 10^120
unvigintiljoona = 10^126
trigintiljoona = 10^180
sentiljoona = 10^600

[kishnevi]

And how do you say gazillion in Finnish?

The highest numbers I remember seeing in normal writing were quadrillion (=1000 trillion) and quintillion(=1000 quadrillion), and while sextillion through nonillion would work by analogy, I am not sure English has words past that. If one needs those numbers, exponential expressions are used.

[North Star]

And how do you say gazillion in Finnish?

The highest numbers I remember seeing in normal writing were quadrillion (=1000 trillion) and quintillion(=1000 quadrillion), and while sextillion through nonillion would work by analogy, I am not sure English has words past that. If one needs those numbers, exponential expressions are used.

The larger ones on my list have been used mainly in describing how much money Scrooge McDuck has

Most of the words have the same root as the English equivalents. And those Latin numbers don't end at nine, so of course the nomenclature works for larger numbers than nonillion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers

BTW, the word numero, number, in Finnish is used for the single digits, and phone numbers, car plates etc., but 'luku' is used in general for numbers that aren't single digit integers.

[Ken B]

tuhat =10^3
kymmenentuhatta = 10^4
satatuhatta = 10^5
miljoona = 10^6
miljardi = 10^9
biljoona = 10^12
triljoona = 10^18
kvadriljoona = 10^24
kvintiljoona = 10^30
sekstiljoona = 10^36
septiljoona = 10^42
oktiljoona = 10^48
noviljoona = 10^54
dekiljoona = 10^60
undekiljoona = 10^66
duodekiljoona = 10^72
tredekiljoona = 10^78
kvattuordekiljoona = 10^84
kvindekiljoona = 10^90
sedekiljoona = 10^96
septendekiljoona = 10^102
duodevigintiljoona = 10^108
undevigintiljoona = 10^114
vigintiljoona = 10^120
unvigintiljoona = 10^126
trigintiljoona = 10^180
sentiljoona = 10^600

Finns have way too much free time.

[Linus]

2. As a Wagner lover, the biggest problem (for me) of this composer, in spite of all the wrangling about other things, is lack of output. I have been listening to Bach and Brahms for fifty years (not nonstop) and still have more to discover. With Wagner it was all over in two years. Well, probably because I listened nonstop. But still. Would he had taken time out from his writing his long shelf-full of unneeded opinion books and pamphlets to write more operas, and a few symphonies also.

I've been reluctant to listen through Wagner because I imagine there is so much to absorb. At least I've come to assume that his operas really should be consumed as Gesamtkunstwerke, i.e. one should not only listen to the music, but understand the plot, hear the words, witness the stage work etc. It seems a bit overwhelming to me.

5. The late 19th century was perhaps the greatest time, culturally, in the history of the post-medieval West. The panoply of greatness across music, art and literature is vast and varied. Yet many of the practitioners thought the culture was dying and depraved. So people often undervalue their own time. This cannot be true of us, however, as our time really is depraved, no two ways about it. And where is there culture today?     

Some of it seems to have been absorbed by new media, like cinema. It seems to me that while artists in music during the 20th century were desperate to keep music alive, auteurs of cinema had a whole new, fresh world to discover. So perhaps the spirit doesn't die, it just moves around. Maybe from being chased around by the dread forces of depravity.

I remember Spengler writing that the greatest time, culturally, in the West was the late 1600s, with the West's cultural "idea" reaching its zenith around that time with Bach, Rembrandt and others.

[Jo498]

Bach did not really do much in the late 1600s when he was a child/teenager. About half or the 1600s were really bad for most of Europe (except Italy, France and Netherlands) with the 30 years war and aftermath in Germany and central Europe and the Puritans in England there were some artistically rather barren decades.

[Karl Henning]

Bach may well still have been learning his craft, particularly via a lot of organ practicing/practitioning.

[Florestan]

About half or the 1600s were really bad for most of Europe (except Italy, France and Netherlands) with the 30 years war and aftermath in Germany and central Europe and the Puritans in England there were some artistically rather barren decades.

Not quite. Despite all the devastation and suffering brought about by the Thirty Years War, the 17th century German Countries were never barren artistically. Limiting ourselves to music, we find Michael Praetorius, Heinrich Schuetz, Johann Jakob Froberger, Matthias Weckmann, Johann Rosenmueller, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Heinrich Ignaz von Biber, Georg Muffat, Johann Jakob Walther, Johann Paul von Westhoff, Samuel Scheidt, Johann Pachelbel, Dieterich Buxtehude... I´d say this is a rather impressive list. 

[Jo498]

Almost all of them were born (or came to maturity) after the war. Schuetz very clearly suffered during the war and there are remarks by him and contemporaries about the sorry state of music.
I did not mean to express that the 17th century was infertile. But it seems decidedly odd to clearly prefer it to the 16th or 18th (at least in music). And of course centuries have strange borderlines: Does Shakespeare belong to the 16th or 17th?

[North Star]

Bach did not really do much in the late 1600s when he was a child/teenager. About half or the 1600s were really bad for most of Europe (except Italy, France and Netherlands) with the 30 years war and aftermath in Germany and central Europe and the Puritans in England there were some artistically rather barren decades.

In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

[Florestan]

Almost all of them were born (or came to maturity) after the war.

Actually, only 4 of them were born after the war (roughly 30%), while 6 of them (roughly 43%) established their reputation before or during the war. 

Statistics aside, it is obvious that the 17h century German music has never known any barren decades.

[Linus]

Bach did not really do much in the late 1600s when he was a child/teenager.

Yeah, I'm not really sure how Spengler calculated things, perhaps it was the early 1700s, my memory fails me. His point, I think, was that the Faustian idea of "gazing at the horizon/eternity" reached its peak around that time, give or take a few artists.

Or, Spengler placed the peak at that time in order to justify the idea that his time (early 20th?) was indeed a dying age (inferred from the idea that history/culture is cyclic). As the original poster, Chaszz, wrote: people often undervalue their own time.

[Karl Henning]

Nice av, Linus!

[Linus]

Nice av, Linus!

Thanks, Karl! You look smashing, yourself!