Comments | aadroma: [Multilingual Monday] As easy as Āi, Zī,Yū: Nōsō Numbers and Dates

aadroma

[Multilingual Monday] As easy as Āi, Zī,Yū: Nōsō Numbers and Dates

Feb 19, 2007 22:37

Would you believe that I have a whole journal filled with almost exclusively stuff I've written about my conlang Nōsō? It's certainly not been easy, especially since making words requires breaking words down to create, if not a descriptive word built from the Nōsō vocabulary (horse -> rōm -> "ride-on being"), at least some vague reference (moon -> ( Read more... )

multilingual monday, Nōsō

Comments 5

dibsy February 20 2007, 06:09:06 UTC

So why have you stuck with base ten for the numbering system? Go on, make it really complicated for yourself. Base 12 works (ten fingers, two hands), base 8 is credible (four fingers on each hand, counting with the thumbs), or base 9 (use one thumb to count).

Base 2? Binary number systems work for computers, and you only have to be able to count to one...

aadroma February 21 2007, 00:24:06 UTC

:: laugh :: What, having different NAMES for the numbers isn't bad enough? I'd honestly debated this (especially with higher bases), but trying to figure out HOW to say "7,572" is a big enough of a challenge, let alone converting it mentally on the fly to a base 12 figure! :: laugh :: I'd also debated a different system of time and an eight day week, among other things. :: chuckle ::

dibsy February 24 2007, 01:13:27 UTC

Would this help?

dr_tectonic February 20 2007, 06:56:01 UTC

For higher numbers, I can think of a few options. You could do hundred as "ten of ten", and then thousand as "ten of hundred" (or maybe 10k as "hundred of hundred") and so on. Or you could do it exponentially: come up with a word that means "multiplied by itself", and then 100 is "10 selfed twice", a million is "ten selfed six", and so on.

Or you could just declare that large numbers in Nōsō are purely positional: if it's more than 99, you just list all the digits. So "1969" is simply "one nine six nine". Although, that means that the only way to say "a thousand" is "one zero zero zero", which is fairly awkward, so maybe that's not a good approach after all.

aadroma February 21 2007, 00:27:02 UTC

That's a really good idea -- I, ironically, have words for base mathematical operators, so I might look into using "10^2" as a hundred, if I don't figure out how to do 100 otherwise. Ten of ten might not work -- that'd be "vrāuz vrāu" (literally "ten's ten"), but after that, it'd be -- what, vrāuz vrāuz vrāuz vrāu??? :: laugh ::