Re: Possible base-20 numeric system

Henrik Theiling wrote:
 >
 > Trebor Jung <treborjung@...> writes:
 >
 > > How do you think I should combine to form higher numbers?
 >
 >
 > Well, if you want a system similar to decimal in English, decide how
 > many digits would make a 'paket', say n, and then have words for
 >
 > 20^1    -> 20
 > 20^2    -> 400
 > ...
 > 20^n    -> if n = 3 (as in English), that'd be it, namely: 8000
 >
 > Then 20^n would correspond to the 'packet' number 1000 in English.

[snip]

 > Chinese, Japanese, Korean (and others) have decimal with n=4.  There
 > are also natlangs that have n=2.
 >
 > As an option, don't be so regular, e.g. compare the Hindi system of
 > numbers >= 100, it's quite interesting as the packets are sometimes
 > n=2 and sometimes n=3.
 >
 > My conlangs Tyl Sjok and Qeng|ai have n=1, but it's a bit more
 > complicated than that, since the base may be 2, 8, 10, and 16 (and in
 > principle, anything between 2 and 16), and the exponents may be in
 > exponential form as well.

Exponential form? Is this what you mean?

lu                      one
we                      two
ya                      three
ye                      four
esá                     five
esé                     six
ushá                    seven
ushí                    eight
shu                     nine
insé                    ten
--                      --
lu insé                 eleven
we insé                 twelve
insé we                 twenty
ushí insé shu           ninety-eight
--                      --
utsé                    a hundred
lu utsé                 a hundred and one
ye insé ushá utsé shu   nine hundred and seventy-four
--                      --
utsé insé               a thousand (10 * 100)
tahwé                   ten thousand (10^4)
tahwé insé              hundred thousand (10 * 10^4)
tahwé utsé              a million (100 * 10^4)
tahwé utsé insé         ten million (10 * 100 * 10^4)
moyé                    a hundred million (10^8)
moyé insé               10 * 10^8
moyé utsé               100 * 10^8
moyé utsé insé          10 * 100 * 10^8
moyé tahwé              10^4 * 10^8
moyé tahwé insé         10 * 10^4 * 10^8
moyé tahwé utsé         100 * 10^4 * 10^8
moyé tahwé utsé insé    10 * 100 * 10^4 * 10^8


This is what I made up recently for Eyahwánsi.

René