Re: USAGE: Well, at least he created numbers.....

On 20 Jan, Adam Walker wrote:

> However, this brings me to a question I've been meaning to ask for several
> months now.  What does the prhase "four thousand nine" mean in your
> conlangs?  In English it would mean 4009, but in Chinese it means 4900.
> What do you do with this?
    Well, in my conlang, rtemmu, it would probably elicit a reply of
"va'i  wexdil?", loosely translated as "Huh?". This is because,
in rtemmu, one cannot have a sequence of numbers without
connecting particles.
    In this case, the particles used would be:

"-yeh-"  =  muliplied times; written as a part of the word
"-t'i-"    =  raised to the power of; written as a part of the word
"ag" = and (with no noticible development during the conjunction);
                  written as a separate word

(' = glottal stop, o` = [O])

thus:
"thousand" = tukuht'ivdik
(tukuh = 10; t'i = to the power of; vdik = 3)

"four thousand" = vdo`gyehtukuht'ivdik
( = four times ten-to-the-power-of-three;
vdo`g = 4; yeh = times)

    To say, "four-times-ten, to the power of three"
(= 40 cubed, ie 64,000) one would put in a separating
marker "-kik-" after the ten:
vdo`gyehtukuhkikt'ivdik
( =  vdo`g-yeh-tukuh-kik-t'i-vdik )


"four thousand  _and_  nine =
vdo`gyehtukuht'ivdik ag vdak
(ag= and; vdak = 9)

"four thousand _and_ nine hundred =
 vdo`gyehtukuht'ivdik ag vdakyehtukuht'iwtikuh
( = four times ten-to-the-power-of-three
 and nine times ten-to-the power-of-two;
wtikuh = 2)

It does get to be a mouthful, without even considering that,
in rtemmu, the articles (definite, indefinite, and
indeterminate [one example exists; it is not known if others do])
are also suffixed onto the ends of numbers. (Only one article per
number, suffixed to the end of the smallest unit mentioned.)

Fortunately, numbers connected with "-yeh-" or "-t'i-"  are all
considered to be changing at the same rate, thus having only one
rate-of-change marker at the beginning of the number (left out
above for purposes of simplification.)  ;-)
_However_ , the parts of the number joined by "ag" can each
take a different rate of change marker (just to make things
interesting! <G>)
    (BTW, this is the same "ag" conjunction used to join words into
phrases in sentences; the difference being that in numbers, "ag" is
used without a prefixed Imperative "au-", whereas in joining
words, it takes the "au-".)


Dan Sulani
---------------------------------
likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.