Re: EAK numerals

On 5/22/07, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > On 5/21/07, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> >
> >> I am undecided about 20, 30, 40 etc. - whether to use analytic forms
> >> like 'duó déka', 'tría déka etc., or to use forms derived from the
> >> ancient language, namely: eíkosa, triákonta, tessarákonta, pentêkonta,
> >> eksêkonta, ebdomêkonta (70), ogdoêkonta, enenêkonta.
> >>
> >> In view of the irregularity of the formation of 10x words, I am inclined
> >> towards the purely analytic forms, despite the criticisms leveled at
> >> Esperanto's _du dek_, _tri dek_ etc.
> >
> >
> > Why not, as a compromise,  retroactively regularize the ancient forms?
> > Perhaps adopt -konta as a standard x10 suffix,
>
> I had considered whether to abstract a word _kónta_, meaning "a group of 10"
An obvious (to me) thing would be to use the numbers -- which are
derived from a combining form anyway -- and make compounds with kónta
(which could be a bound morpheme, if you'd like), thus: duókonta,
triákonta, tetrákonta, pentákonta, eksákonta, eptákonta, oktákonta,
enneákonta (some accents moving so that they are not more than three
syllables from the end).

Which would seem (again, to me) to be a nice compromise. (And
triákonta will even stay the same! And the remainder will be, at
least, recognisable, and they look, to me, as if they could have been
the appropriate AG forms.)

Pòs dokei eis se?

/Fílippo Neútòno
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

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