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numerals

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 4, 2001, 19:57
Hm, I'm working on Tairezazh's numbers sytem. I've not even managed to
conjure up a word for "zero" yet, but I've made a system that's quite
simple:

The base is ten, uncreatively enough. To create the numbers 11-19, you just
add the name of the relevant unit to the word for ten. Eg, _thel_ "ten" and
_dza_ "one" gives _thel-dza_ "eleven". Add _vef_ "three" instead and you get
_thel-vef_ "thirteen". To express multiples of ten, you add the unit before
instead - _sei_ "two" gives _seithel_ "twenty", _vef_ gives _vefthel_
"thirty" etc. This works nice up to _trafthel-trav_ "ninety-nine" (notice
assimilation _vth_>_fth_. Normally you'd expect >_vdh_ instead, but the
stress is on _thel_ in these words). Now, **_thelthel_ wouldn't do, instead
we have _ksád_ "hundred". The same system can be applied to this -
_trafksád-dza_ "nine-hundred-one", _seithel-vefksád-vefthel-sei_
"twenty-three-hundred-thirty-two" = "two-thousand-three-hundred-thirty-two".
Ten thousand (100x100) is _tsfail_, and the greatest number I can express
this far it
_trafthel-trafksád-trafthel-traftsfail-trafthel-trafksád-trafthel-trav_,
that is ninety-nine-houndred-ninety-nine-ten
thousand-ninety-nine-hundred-ninety-nine, aka 99.999.999. Now I just need a
word for hundred-million ...

Anybody got through those four _trafthel_s? Neat, innit?

Any natlang(s) that use a similar system?

                                                        Andreas

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Replies

Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>
Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>