Re: Numerals in Sohlob languages.

Hallo!

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 11:18:58 +0100, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> This is probably most interesting to those who like to
> figure out sound changes from lists of cognates, and for
> collectors of numerals.
>
> I obviously will have to work out the other ordinals.
>  From a Kijeb POV they are all formed the same (with *-yu),
> but sound changes will cause interesting things to happen
> in the daughter languages.
>
> I'm mulling over whether I should expand on the multiples of
> twelve.  According to "Describing Morphosyntax" the only
> known numerical bases in human languages are five, ten and
> twenty, for obvious reasons having to do with the number of
> digits humans possess.
This is a question I have also pondered for long, because I use
a base-12 system in my conlang Old Albic (which is spoken by humans).
Base-12 systems seem to be vanishingly rare in human languages, but
I have read about a language in Nigeria, Nimbia is its name, which
has a base-12 system, so I think it's OK, and at any rate, I am
quite happy with the numerals of Old Albic, and don't wish to
change them.

There are lots of interesting numeral systems around.  A few of them
can be found here:

http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/language/number.html

Greetings,

Jörg.