Editing 257: Code Talkers
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Note that (probably unbeknownst to Randall) the actual code used by the Navajo code talkers was not so far removed from the depiction in the comics: The Navajos used a mostly alphabetic code, with one Navajo word for each English letter. (This meant that even though the Axis captured at least one native Navajo speaker, he could not make any sense of what was said.) However, several important terms were given their own Navajo idioms, so the entropy would be somewhat higher than depicted in the comic. | Note that (probably unbeknownst to Randall) the actual code used by the Navajo code talkers was not so far removed from the depiction in the comics: The Navajos used a mostly alphabetic code, with one Navajo word for each English letter. (This meant that even though the Axis captured at least one native Navajo speaker, he could not make any sense of what was said.) However, several important terms were given their own Navajo idioms, so the entropy would be somewhat higher than depicted in the comic. | ||
| β | The title text is a disclaimer from [[Randall]] about using "neutral" instead of "zero" | + | The title text is a disclaimer from [[Randall]] about using "neutral" instead of "zero." Navajo has words for the concept of nothing, but not for the numeral zero. Most number systems are not [[Wikipedia:positional notation|positional]], and therefore may lack the number zero. The [[Wikipedia:Arabic numerals|Arabic numeral system]] used in the West required the invention of the zero as a placeholder, so that numbers could retain their position when one column has nothing in it. |
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
