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

On Sunday 20 January 2002 17:31, you wrote:
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?
Hmmm....
Kélen counts in base 8, with vestigial base 12 and sort-of 16, which
means that higher numbers are usually counted in 96's, until one
reaches 64 squared (4096). So...

4009 is 41 96's plus stuff, but that is unaesthetic, so let's count
it as (5x8)x96 + 144 + 24 + 1, or
        ámmor-Nó aT-árálu aT-énnaral aT-án

Alternately, 4009 can be expressed as 4096 - (64 + (16+5)):
        órónu pé óru aT-álu aTónne

4900 is a more straightforward 4096 + (8x96) + (4x8) + 4:
        órónu aT-ánor-Nó aT-állor awijór

Now, 4-thousand nine, would be the equivalent of either (4x96)+9*
(=393) or ((4x8)x96)+9 (=3081), which are:
        wijór-Nó aT-áru  or  állor-Nó aT-áru

(* Oh, and 9 has a special form derived from the now obsolete word
for the number 3...)

I expect that the engineers have their own guild-secret way of
counting that is much more decimal-like and makes all this much
easier...

[This post contains: á (a-acute) é (e-acute) ó (o-acute)]

--
Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com

wa jamú jániTa;  (not.be thing.SG one-thing.SG)

The Kélen language can be found at:
http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/Kelen/kelen.html

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