Re: The English/French counting system (WAS: number systems fromconlangs)

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> But 17 in Latin
> was "septemdecim" and didn't need such a replacement. My guess is that
> sound changes made it undistinguishable from another number - maybe it
> would have become identical with "seize" - and it was replaced by a
> transparent form).
Or perhaps it's just analogy.  Above 20 you have the units *after* the
tens.  Vingt et un, not *unvingt.  In Latin, IIRC, you could say both
"vigente et unus" or "unus et vigente", or something to that effect.
English, too, used to have forms like "four and twenty".  The continued
extension of the tens-ones order into the teens seems quite logical to
me.

And smaller numbers seem to be generally more conservative.  English
preserves the one-tens order in 13-19.  French and many other romance
languages preserve gender distinctions in the number "one".  Portuguese
does for both one and two.  I wouldn't be surprised to learn of a
Romance language that had masculine and feminine forms for "three",
altho I don't actually know of any.  And, as in the ordinals thread,
ordinals for small numbers are often irregular, as in one -> first, two
-> second, three -> third, five -> fifth, twelve -> twelfth (and only
the first two of those are completely irregular)

Of course, English also has two -> twenty, three -> thirty (but same
sound change three -> thir as in "third" and "thirteen") and fifty.

Uatakassi has a few irregular forms.  It's base 12.  Here are the
irregular numbers I know of:

13: naduuta (12 = nadu, 1 = ta) - note: this also occurs in *all*
    multiples of 12, e.g., 24 = kannadu, 25 = kannaduuta
14: naduubi (12 = nadu, 2 = kabi) - As above, in all multiples
    of 12, e.g., 26 = kannaduubi
24: Kannadu (2 = kabi, 12 = nadu) <-- this is based on an archaic prefix
    kal- "twice"
36: Diidii (3 = sli, 12 = nadu, 6 = mandu) <-- This comes from an
    obsolete word _dii_ "six", the sole survival of an ancient base 6;
    the modern word for 6 is literally "half-twelve"
37: Diidiata (1 = ta)
38: Diidikkabi (2 = kabi)
48: Tindu (4 = vandu) <-- The ti- here represents an archaic word for
    "four"; the modern term is literally "third of twelve"; -ndu is
    the normal compounding form of nadu when the preceding morpheme
    ends in a vowel
72: Dinkadu <-- Related to the _dii_ of _diidii_

In addition, several numbers have alternate forms in compounds with
vowel-final words:

5: daki, -ssi
7: zaba, -zba
8: dabi, -zbi (hmm ... this might be potentially a confusing
   ambiguity)
12: nadu, -ndu

In addition, 1 and 10 have basic forms _ta_ and _kaz_, which become
lengthened to _taa_ and _kaaz_ when they occur alone.  This is due to
the requirement that all words be at least two morae.

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