Re: Numbers and math

Taliesin wrote

>A classic question is: how do you count to ten in your conlang?
Kash (decimal):  mesa, ro, sila, ha, nim, keli, sor, fanu, sana, mepola;
zero is tanda
Optional/fast/combining forms  mes...sit.....ket,sot,fan, san
Teens: fola + combining forms; Decades comb. form unit + fola with
morphophonemic changes: mepola, rofola, sipola, hafola, nimbola, kepola,
sopola, fambola, sambola.  Many say _ropola, hapola_.   Hundred rongo,
thousand amba, million ambraka, billion (1000 million) apambraka; trillion
cimakoñ, quadrillion cimanji (< Gwr, 'thousand vast four/five, ie 1000 to
the fourth/fifth power). Beyond this, as they say, only children and bankers
need names. When used, they would be written as powers of 10.

Gwr (old base 8): ai1, ni5, hr12, koN1, dzi1, ho5, shr54, ma?5
Gwr (current decimal):  after shr, add faN3, saN3; ma? is still '10' (1 is
lowest tone, 5 highest.)  Teens in both systems were pyN3+unit (y=barred i),
decades unit+maq5; 1000 chih54; remainder of Gwr system has been neglected.

>Generalizing: (Kash only)
> - do you form ordinals from cardinals? how? if not, how?
prefix ku-; alternative 'first' (non-serial or adverbial) angasi 'beginning'

> - do you have a zero?   yes, tanda
> - can numbers be negative? yes, but no term yet
> - fractions? percentiles? if it's not a decimal system, is there
>   something instead of percentiles?
Fractions use the ku- form-- sila kunim '3/5', kepola sit kurongo '73/100';
also written as decimals .6 (kik sot), .73,  or as a percent 60/oo, 73/oo
'Half', however, is angunjo 'division'-- ro (i) angunjo 'two and a half' but
written .5 or 5/oo

Not fully determined:
> - how do you add, subtract, multiply and divide? (if you know how)
> - what about raising to the nth power and n-roots?

(There is a recent post on Conculture about weights and measures)

>I think I'll stop there but you get the idea :)