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Maltcégj: Difference between revisions
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In fact, pronouns in Maltcégj are even a little simpler than those in English, because there are no cases to decline. Possessives (''my'', ''your'', ''his'', ''our'', &c.) are formed by adding the preposition ''u-'' to the word being possessed, and the accusative case (''me'', ''him'', ''her'', ''them'', &c.) by adding the postposition ''-a'' to the pronoun. | In fact, pronouns in Maltcégj are even a little simpler than those in English, because there are no cases to decline. Possessives (''my'', ''your'', ''his'', ''our'', &c.) are formed by adding the preposition ''u-'' to the word being possessed, and the accusative case (''me'', ''him'', ''her'', ''them'', &c.) by adding the postposition ''-a'' to the pronoun. | ||
==Numbers== | |||
Maltcégj numbers are base-10 (decimal), but they increase incrementally instead of in the more regular groups of three or six. Therefore, numbers through 999 are enumerated just as they are in English, but the number 1,000 is considered “ten hundred,” or ''seþ sam''. Thereafter, 10,000 is ''cep'', 100,000 ''seþ cep'' ‘ten ten-thousands’, 1,000,000 is ''sam cep'' ‘one hundred ten-thousands’, 10,000,000 is ''seþ sam cep'' ‘ten hundred ten-thousands’, and 100,000,000 is ''jak''. The next increment after ''jak'' is ''gwil'', which has a value of ten quadrillion (or ten billiard if you’re from some parts of Europe), followed by ''ǧan'', which is a number large enough that you shouldn’t ever need it unless you’re counting individual atoms, but it’s something like one hundred nonillion (10³²). | |||
Compound numbers are spoken as they are written in English, from left to right, (optionally) inserting indicators for tens, hundreds, thousands, &c., so “twenty-nine” is ''daiséþ nein'' ‘two tens nine’, while 3,587 is ''transéþ fremsám relkséþ dan'' ‘three tens five hundreds eight tens seven, or thirty-five hundred eighty-seven’. Easier still, and less subject to misinterpretation, the numbers can simply be read from right to left, as in ''tran frem relk dan'' ‘three five eight seven’. These are all correct, just as it’s correct in English to say “three thousand five hundred eighty-seven,” “thirty-five hundred and eighty-seven,” “thirty-five eighty-seven,” or even (somewhat less correctly) “three five eight seven.” | |||
The number “zero” should always be read as ''zo'', not ''bleg'', though the two words are interchangeable in some circumstances. When the last digit is zero, however, it should be read as “''seþ'',” or “''sam''” if two zeros… It may sound a little strange, but we do the same thing in English. For example, 780 should be read ''dan relk seþ'' ‘seven eighty’; 7,800, ''dan relk sam'' ‘seventy-eight hundred’; 78,000, ''dan relk seþ sam'', ‘seventy-eight thousand, &c. | |||
With the exception of the number ‘one’, the particle ''gji'' indicates ordinality, much like the suffix ''-th'' for numbers 4 – 10 in English. Any number ending in ‘one’ takes the ordinal ''adám'', just as we say first and second in English rather than ''**oneth'' or ''**twoth''. | |||
Maltcégj uses the particle ''ak'' before a noun to indicate that it is plural, but this particle is not used when a number is present. For example, ‘book’ is ''klag'', ‘books’ is ''aklág'', but ‘two books’ is ''klag dai'' (no ''ak''). (See [[Maltcégj#Nouns]] for more on the use of the plural.) | |||
If using decimals in numbers, the word dat is used to mean ‘point’ or ‘dot’, though it literally means ‘seed’ or ‘egg’. | |||