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> I suggest that what you say, Bill, is true today, but aren't you > overlooking changes in speech patterns? As a mathematician, I came > to > appreciate some time ago that positional notation (as it's called) of > the > sort used in referring to a number by the numeral 134 rather than > cxxxiv > took some ingenuity, involving many years of work and development by > many > people, I quite agree. The Arabic system is very clever, and was not worked out or adopted overnight. But having worked it out, why not stick with it? My initial remark was aimed at those who worry about what form of Roman numerals to use today. Why use the Roman system at all today? What are its advantages? It may be easier to carve Roman numerals on a stone tablet, but how often do we have occasion to do that? Even then, I see a lot of gravestones in my job, and I've never seen a modern one carved with Roman numerals. Stone carvers don't seem to have much trouble with the Arabic ones. Oriens. ____________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.co.uk address at http://mail.yahoo.co.uk or your free @yahoo.ie address at http://mail.yahoo.ie %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%