Re: base-20 (was Re: Numbers from 1 to 12 in Ayeri)

Trebor Jung wrote:
>Hmm... I wanted something exotic so I made Kosi base-20, but I don't really
>know how such a system works. I know that there are separate lexemes for
the
>numbers one through twenty in base-20 languages (Kosi üs, ket, kom, ner,
öt,
>sab, het, kaes, kic, den, len, töl, tin, von, sihn, sen, ein, naem, tuan),
>but not much else... Could someone please enlighten me?
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I believe many of the Northeast Caucasian languages such as Avar, Lezgian,
Dargwa, etc., are vigesimal, i.e., base 20.  I will look up how they put
their numbers together and get back to you.

Also:  Before finally deciding to change it to base-100, Ithkuil used to be
base-20.  The way it worked was as follows:  separate single number roots
from 1 to 20, followed by double digits indicating the number of twenties
and the number of ones.  This continued up to the last two-digit number
which translated as "ninteen twenties and nineteen" (equals 399 in base-10)
followed by the next single root equivalent to 20 squared ("twenty
twenties") analogous to the word "hundred" being ten tens.  This continued
up to nineteen of these 20-squared roots plus 19 twenties plus 19 (equals
7999 in base-10) at which point the next single root represented 20-cubed
(20 x 20 x 20), and so on.

John Quijada