This poem was originally inspired by the following passage in Chapter II of The Analects by Kǒng Fūzi or Master Kong:
[in simplified Chinese characters:] 吾十有五而志於学，三十而立，四十而不惑，五十而知天命， 六十而耳顺，七十而从心所欲，不逾矩。 [in Pinyin:] Wú shíyǒuwǔ ér zhì yú xué, sānshí ér lì, sìshí ér bú huò, wǔshí ér zhī tiān mìng, liùshí ér ěr shùn, qīshí ér cóng xīn suǒ yù, bù yú jǔ. [translated by me as literally as possible:] When i was fifteen i wanted to study; at thirty i established myself; at forty i was not confused anymore; at fifty i knew what heavenly life meant; at sixty my ears would obey; at seventy i followed my heart's desire, without breaking the rule. For more information see https://en.wikiquote.org/[ ]wiki/Confucius, where an alternative, freer translation can be found.
Note that the very last word in the above passage, 矩 or jǔ, does not only mean rule, but also carpenter's square. In Latin the word for a carpenter's square is norma, from which the word norm derives, which, like 矩, refers to a rule or principle of right action as well.
The Chinese character script is not bicameral in that it has two cases, an upper case (capitals) and a lower case (small letters); the Latin script is. In general, in the latter script and in This Language in particular, capitals are used at the beginning of a sentence and for names. Hence, i use the small i as the personal pronoun to refer to myself where it is the subject of a clause but not the first word of the sentence. I cannot repeat it often enough, it seems: i do not consider myself a, let alone The, Supreme Being or anything else of that Ilk.
The new numerical terms used in the poem for the number 80 of the denary ('decimal') system are part of a macrobinary system of numbers and universally human systematic 'names' developed by me in an as yet unpublished manuscript. The system is called "macrobinary", because it is based on the powers of two in general (especially on two and sixteen), rather than on two itself only (which, in that capacity, can be referred to as the base of a 'microbinary' system).
For the vocabulary of numbers we may confine ourselves to the minimum and look at 8 as 8 (that is, no more than itself in a denary system) and at 80 as 8x10. But since, for example, 82=8x10+2x1, we can also look at 80 as 8x10+0x1. On the basis of such a regular variation in viewpoints there may be more than one verbal expression for numbers in the macrobinary system. Of the expressions for the denary number 80 tosa mu is the elementary and informal one; tosa suten is more general and formal, because it makes use of the morpheme su which is required for numbers larger than 255; and tosa suten ma suman is the most general and formal variant of the three. Whereas the 'names' of numbers are traditionally plain, if not boring, expressions, in the most formal binary ones among them arithmetic and verbal art meet to create uncommon beauty in simplicity.
Given no more and no fewer than the phonemes of This Language tosa suten ma suman would be pronounced |TOH-SAH su-TEIN MAH su-MAHN| with |soo| as an alternative for |su|. The primary stress in tosa would be on the second syllable, but if the context calls for it, it may be on the first. Just like su, also mu (10 in what denarians call 'the hexadecimal system', that is, 16 denary) may be variously pronounced |MU| or |MOO|. (For an explanation of this representation of the phonemes in the present language see my Vocabulary of Alliteration.)
