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== Basic notation ==
== Basic notation ==
Mandae has twelve digits, from 1 to 12.
[[File:Mandae numbers.png|thumb|left]]
Mandae has twelve digits, from 1 to 12. They are traditionally broken down into four groups: somes, sundial, olds and bigs. Somes are 1, 2 and 3 and "somes" means "a little bit", "numbers that indicate just some". The sundial group refers to the way the symbols incrementally add elements in order to indicate growth: a 4 is a square, a five adds a dot to the square, the 6 adds a line, the 7 adds two and, finally, an 8 is a square within a square, which is a way of displaying two 4s. The olds are united by a similar incremental symbol, which takes the basic element of 2 and adds a dot and then two dots. Finally, the bigs are simply the two largest digits, 11 and 12.
The general incremental nature of the symbols can actually be observed in digits 1 through 8: 1 is a line, 2 is essentially two connected lines, 3 is three and four is a square, made up of 4 lines. Then elements are incrementally added up to 8.
While there are special symbols for 72, 144 and 1728, numbers up to 144 can be pretty comfortably written down, using the available twelve digits. One uses a vertical line called "staff" (a literal translation from Mandae) to sum the digits, thus producing a new digit. For instance, if one wishes to write down 14, one can write it as any combination of the two digits, be it 12+2 or 11+3 or 10+4. Different countries tend to adapt several common combinations, and the rule of thumb is two try to use the largest digit. So, in case of 14 it would be more common to represent it by doing 12+2. However, one can also simply put one number after the staff, which would mean that the number is summed by itself, thereby allowing to write down 14 as 7+7:
