Weddish/Numerals: Difference between revisions

Weddish numerals are truly difficult to learn for outsiders.  The Wedds themselves are very good at arithmetic and are very focused on pedagogy and the superiority of their system.  Basically counting begins the same (since it cannot be otherwise):

This is where things start getting weird for English-speakers.  "Ten" and "eleven" have dedicated, solitary symbols:

Now comes a hard fact of Weddish: it is not position, like English, but symbolic, like Chinese.  That is, Arabic numerals distinguishes between 1 and 10 by the presence of more zero's, which change the '''''position''''' of a 1, which changes its worth.  Far East Asian languages have dedicated symbols for such things: 一 is one, 十 is ten and 百 is a hundred.  Weddish has a similar system, except for each  dozen.  These may freely be combined with numbers under 12.

This means you have to think in dozens.  It is no good calling 55 five-tens and five-ones.  You have to call it four-dozen and 7-more, which is written סז and pronounced '''fǔnk swyn'''.  Notice that the dozens are written before the ones, like our numbers.  However, without a zero (see below) the dozens can appear alone.  This is comparable to Roman numerals special symbol for 50.

By the time we get to our 60 --- five dozen --- it is time to consider a fitting metaphor: time!  Indeed, the Weddish word for our 60 comes from the word 'time' or 'hour'.  60 minutes is an hour.  The next scale of numbers are the sixties, which we will call 'hours':

# ''two hours'' is '''twy sǔnð''', and is written with a (non-final) '''peh''' and double-gereł: פ׳׳

# ''three hours'' is '''þriy sǔnð''', and is written with a (non-final) '''xadeh''' and double-gereł: צ׳׳

== Modern Numbers ==

{{Aquatiki}}

[[Category:Weddish]]