Number System?

[alexfink]

I was thinking the latter, so that you don't have to nest a subtraction inside something (parallel to my 56). But either is workable.

[kadani]

I fear that it would make say 6 and 14 sound rather similar unless this is 'dealt with' phonetically for example.

[Miatato]

Perhaps something like one, two, three, four, half-ten, half-ten-and-one, ten-less-three, ten-less-two, ten-less-one, ten, ten-and-one, ten-and-two, ten-and-three, ten-and-four, ten-and-a-half-ten, ten-less-four, ten-less-three, ten-less-two, ten-less-one, two-tens....

Why is six a "half ten and one" while 16 (and probably 26, 36 etc.) "(x)ten/s-less-four"? Why not? These crazy people and their crazy forward and backward counting language!

Just an idea. Feel free to bat me over the head with a salami and tell me, "No!" in a firm voice.

[Dedalvs]

[alavda-isere]

I concur! I like this system a lot, though as bad as I am at math, some numbers might be harder, especially when you get into 3 or 4 (or more...) digits.

[alexfink]

Hey, looks like we've got a winner. Shall we make up some roots?

I'm gonna go first and propose that "less" / "without" is -(u)l (the u where phonotactically necessary) (and throwing in the sense "without" so we can use this as a general derivational element: tsenglail 'poor', txifomul 'bald', pakilal 'blind', ...). I went for a stress-attracting suffix imagining that that would help make pairs like 7 = 10-3-(u)l and 13 = 10-tei(?)-3 more distinct, hopefully assuaging Mechthild's concerns a bit.

[Dedalvs]

OMG!!! Not related to the topic, but I just--for the very first time--got an e-mail notification that someone had replied to a post! WOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO!!!!

[Miatato]

I feel like I am really bad at coming up with numbers, so here's my tiny proposal for the afternoon:
jel-, half-(of a quantity... with other possible applications, undoubtedly)
eng, one.

[Matthew Turnbull]

Perhaps something like one, two, three, four, half-ten, half-ten-and-one, ten-less-three, ten-less-two, ten-less-one, ten, ten-and-one, ten-and-two, ten-and-three, ten-and-four, ten-and-a-half-ten, ten-less-four, ten-less-three, ten-less-two, ten-less-one, two-tens....

So we only need 1, 2, 3, 4, 1/2, less, and and.
so only seven morphemes, maybe we could have 10, 20, 30, 40 and maybe even roots for 100 ...

My 2c.
1,jo
2,im
3,ko
4,pa

What does everyone think?

[Miatato]

That works for me. Anyone else have suggestions for what we still lack?
I did make a suggestion for "half" (jel)... less/minus?

Also, does anyone have a suggestion for getting ordinal numbers out of cardinal numbers?