Every
base describes itself as
base 10.
N in base N is 10, n integer, n>1
if you are working in base sixteen, and have grown up with it, never having even heard of base ten, your pronunciation of "10" is "ten". If you have "ten" pies, that's one pie per person for eight sets of twins.
So, if we ever need to tell someone what base we are working in, how will we do it? (A funny first contact story would be: "hello, we are in base 10, how about you?")
We could use base 1. So you could say "we are working in base 1111111111" today, and they'd probably figure it out. The only problem would be if you met someone who wanted to work in base eleven, and you wanted to work in base two.
another alternative is to make up words for each of these bases, like so: binary, trinary, quaternary, quintary, sextary, heptary, octal, nonary, decimal, etc. But, that could get tough after a while. I will think of more words for the names of bases.
The most sensible alternative is to just explain your base by mentioning your highest single digit number. So people who say "9" would work in decimal, "F" would work in hexidecimal, and "Z" would work in base 36(decimalalphabetical)
It might be hard to get used to saying that we work in base nine, but it would clear up so many problems.