How do you count to ten in Roman?

Answer 1

The Romans used I to represent 1, V to represent 5 and X to represent 10.

Counting from 1 to 10 would look like this -

1=I

2=II

3=III

4=IV

5=V

6=VI

7=VII

8=VIII

9=IX

10=X

In order to minimise the number of characters used, they would use the relative position of smaller units written before larger ones to represent the fact that the smaller number should be deducted from the larger number. For example they would represent 4 as IV (meaning 1 less than 5) rather than IIII and similarly placing the smaller unit after the larger one means that the smaller unit is added to the larger one, so they would represent 6 as VI (meaning 1 more than 5).

This system also applies to other values

20=XX, meaning 10+10

30=XXX, meaning 10+10+10

50=L

40=XL, meaning 10 less than 50

60=LX, meaning 10 more than 50

100=C

500=D

1000=M

the year 2010 would be written as MMX (1000+1000+10)

They did not have a letter to represent anything bigger than 1000 but needed to be able to show larger numbers so a horizontal line was added over the letter to show that this was multiplied by 1000.

Unfortunately I cannot show the line in my answer here but if you use your imagination a little -

XX with a line above both X's would mean 20,000

XXI with a line above all 3 letters would be 21,000

XXI with a line over both X's but not over the I would be 20,001

The Romans did use a form of abacus but strangely they did not have a symbol for zero! also in words it would be unu, doi, trei, patru, cinci şase şapte opt nouă zece