Re: Numbers and math

taliessin the storyteller wrote:
> A classic question is: how do you count to ten in your conlang?
In Carashán (with Aredos etymologies):
1- um/una (oinos)
2- duo/doa (dúo)
3- tre/trea (treies)
4- cuetro (cuetuor)
5- peice (pencue)
6- ses (suecs)
7- sette (septem)
8- otto (octó)
9- nuen (nuen)
10- dese (decem)


> Generalizing:
>  - do you form ordinals from cardinals? how? if not, how?
Yep: the ordinal numbers from one to three have different forms, 1st
prezeu/prezea, 2nd secuês/secuêsa, 3rd tresheu/treshea. After this, -eu/-ea
is added to the number, displacing the final vowel: 4th cetoareu/cetoarea,
8th otteu/ottea, 23rd vinyet a tresheu/a, 137th seito trenyet a seseu/a.

>  - do you have a zero?
Yep, necuod, although it's not much used except by mathematicians. It's
Aredos for "nothing".

>  - can numbers be negative?
I presume so, but I'm only a humble linguist, not a mathematican.

>  - fractions? percentiles? if it's not a decimal system, is there
>    something instead of percentiles?
Again, I don't know. Basically, to marketeers fractions are sueme, "half",
trizo "third" and cuetrát "quarter".

>  - how do you add, subtract, multiply and divide? (if you know how)
plus is a "and": um a duo es tre
minus is sen "without" tre sen um es duo
multiplication is carried out by constructions such as "the fifth four is
twenty": lo cuetro peiceu es vinyete.

>  - what about raising to the nth power and n-roots?
Only the mathematicians know that, and they're not saying. Guild secrets,
you know.

> I think I'll stop there but you get the idea :)
>
> I'm asking because there are lotsa new langs here, plus I've finally
> gotten those much wanted târuven numbers from 0 to 10 in place, but my
> guesses at how higher numbers (for instance 73 (decimal)) are formed
> somehow feels wrong, so I need tips (actually I need a târuven book on
> mathematics but I haven't found any so far ;) ).
The Carashais say "twenty and one, twenty and two, etc." vinyete a um,
vinyete a duo.

Dan

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Go dtóga na púcaí do bheithígh!
                                      May the fairies take your livestock!
Dan Jones: www.geocities.com/yl_ruil/
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