Re: specialized numbers

> --- Anton Sherwood froge sionk:
> > Do any of you have two or more sets of numbers, used in different
> > contexts?  I have in mind the Japanese native series (hi hu mi yo)
> > beside the Chinese imports (iti ni san si), and the Lincolnshire
> > Celtic sheep-counting doggerel (yan tan tethera pethera pimp).
Well, my Romal language was originally a pidgin of various human and elven
language, which was first used during the War for Magic, when elves and men
together fled to the east and founded the Elf-Human Free State. The pidgin
slowly developed into a full language. However, since the elves used a
base-4 system and the humans a base-5/10 system, the numeral systems became
somewhat mixed, and today, descendants and mixtures of both systems are
still used. For counting natural numbers etc., the human numerals are used,
while for precise measurements, the elves system is more common.

Most confusing is the term for 4 and 5 in elven and human. Originally, both
used a word that meant "a hand full". However, since elves have four fingers
to a hand, while humans have five, that became somewhat of a problem,
especially in regions where many elves and humans lived together. Regional
variations came into existence, so "elfhand" is now the literal translation
for the word for 4, while "manhand" is the word for 5. A very special case
is the dialect word for 9 used in the central kingdoms of Oriënil Empire,
which means, literally translated, "one of each" (one manhand and one
elfhand).

Maarten