I sat down to stare at digits in mando'a today and noticed something fun. Let me see if I can articulate it.
According to KTâs archives, the numerals below are canon.
solus - one t'ad - two ehn - three cuir - four rayshe'a - five resol - six e'tad - seven sh'ehn - eight she'cu - nine ta'raysh - ten olan - hundred ta'raysholan - thousand
At first glance, they just look like numbers, yeah? And the first four are pretty straight forward, solus, t'ad, ehn, cuir. Itâs after five, rayshe'a, that things start to get kind of confusing in my brain. But look! I saw the trick! Six, resol, is resol. Seven, e'tad, eâtadâ or, e+t'ad. If we assume re- and e are both a carry over from rayshe'a, youâre legit just creating five plus one (5+1) not 6; it means six, but thatâs not really whatâs said. And I think this quantifies based on the next two; eight, sh'ehn, is from fiveâs raysheâa with threeâs ehn, becoming five plus 3 (5+3), and nine, she'cu, is fiveâs rayshe'a with four, cuir.
âWhat about higher numbers?â They show us! Ten is ta'raysh, or two, t'ad, plus five, rayshe'a. Two-five. Olan sets our standard for hundred, and using the same basis for the other words, ta'raysholan becomes two-fives+hundred, with ta (t'ad, from two), raysh (rayshe'a, from five) and olan for hundred. Itâs possible olan is a mutated/altered version of solus but Iâm not quite sure.
âHow does this work? What about even higher numbers?â This plus this equals this. Five plus three equals eight. After that things get tricky. I canât find an official morphology for those numbers at the moment. What do you think? Is twelve ta'ta'raysh, two two five? Or is it ta'raysh'ta, two-fives-two? Or, more likely, is it ta'raysh t'ad? Hard to say. Is 111 olan ta'raysh solus, hundred ten one? Or would you say e'sol, as a way of saying triple one? What about even higher numbers? How do you get to a million, a billion, a trillion?
Hey! I usually just post art but Iâve got that âšMandoâa ConLang Brainrotâš Idk if this is necroposting (necro-reblogging?) but I just wanted to break this down for other people who might be confused (but mostly because I wanted to point out the maybe-cool-thing I realized at the end)!! Anywho this is basically a deep dive I did on the Base-5 aka Quinary number system that Mando'a has, breaking down how it functions, and sprinkling in some real-world language info and how that might have influenced Mando'a:
A heads-up that the formatting will likely be trashed on mobile if you don't select "print view!!!!" Note: This isn't really a âhow Mandoâa numbers basically workâ so anyone new, if youâre looking for a functional guide you should check out this amazing post from @/project-shereshoy (Iâm new to tumblr so Iâm not sure if @-ing is rude?? also not sure how reblogging even functions so I am very sorry if this is a mess đ ). Also this is all just my own interpretation and analysis so I am sorry for any errors or discrepancies,,
