When does one use Greek/Latin numerical prefixes and why?

WHERE:

(From Wikipedia)

"Numerical prefixes occur in five contexts:

* They occur in 19th, 20th and 21st century coinages, mainly the terms that are used in relation to or that are the names of technological innovations, such as hexadecimal and bicycle.

* They occur in constructed words such as systematic names. Systematic names use numerical prefixes derived from Greek, with one exception, nona-.

[systematic names = used in science for naming & classifying, e.g., chemical names, animal classification, in which the entire name is commonly formed from Greek & Latin root-words]

* They occur as prefixes to units of measure in the SI system. See SI prefixes.

* They occur as prefixes to units of computer data. See binary prefixes.

* They occur in words in the same languages as the original number word, and their respective derivatives."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_prefix

WHY:

Not all numerical prefixes in English are from Greek & Latin, though the overwhelming majority are. Note from the list above that most of the words involved

are related to scholarly, scientific and technological use (and that the latter two are offshoots of the first).

The scholarly use of the classical languages for naming, as well as simply borrowing whole new words into English goes back many centuries to times when Latin (with some Greek) was THE means of scholarly and scientific communication (which could therefore also be international -- that is, shared throughout Europe whatever the scholars' native languages). Even after people began writing such works in their natives languages, many elements of this earlier practice were kept. We see them in English in such things as the numerical prefixes (also used by many other European languages) and in a whole set of Latin abbreviations (such as: e.g., i.e., viz., ibid., etc.)

As noted, above the choice between Greek and Latin is commonly related to the language from which the original word was borrowed, but when new words are coined they may, in fact, mix roots & prefixes from different languages.

I believe you are referring Roman numerals. They are used to date television shows and movies because the movie/tv show makers don't want their movies/shows to seem old and out of date, and they are hard for people to read quickly. People are less likely to watch older material if the dates are clearly marked. I read that in an entertainment magazine, and it certainly is true of Disney - nowhere on the outside of their movie covers are the dates given, and you can barely make out the Roman numerals at the end of the movie. It is often used to number the pages of the introduction of a book, before the main text of the actual book starts. Wikipedia probably has a good explanation, if you wanted to look into it further.

Do you mean mono vs. uni, quad vs. tetra, etc.?

I think often the Latin ones go with Latin roots and Greek with Greek roots, but certainly not always.

As much as I can think of, it's still used to identify several generations of fathers and sons with the same first name, and also in movie credits for the year it was released.

John Smith, IV (the fourth)

or

MCMLDXXVI--I think that's 1976 off the top of my head.

well it depends upon the situation

so i need more infromation on the topic

but well if a person ususally gives you symbols

its basically a code to figure out sumthin

i don't understand what you are exactly refering at

but i'm greek and i could help you

give more details or an example

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