For the first time in this series, not only will we be able to treat Isian and Ardari in the same post, but we’ll actually look at them at the same time. We can do this thanks to the similarity in the way they treat numerals. Sure, there are differences, and we’ll see those as we go, but the highlights don’t change that much from the “simple” Isian to the “complicated” Ardari.
The numerals
First off, both conlangs use a decimal system, like most languages in common use today. Both are based around the number ten, but in slightly different ways. Ardari is a more “pure” decimal language, although it has a little bit of vigesimal contamination; Isian, on the other hand, likes to work with hundreds for larger numbers. Although that may sound odd, think about how we do it in English: a million is a thousand thousands, a billion a thousand millions, and so on.
Before we get to the meaty grammar bits, here’s a table of numeral words in both conlangs. It shows all numerals up to twenty, all the multiples of ten up to a hundred, and a few selections to illustrate the numbers in between.
| Number | Isian | Ardari |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | yan | jan |
| 2 | naw | wegh |
| 3 | choy | dwas |
| 4 | khas | fèll |
| 5 | gen | nibys |
| 6 | hod | sald |
| 7 | sowad | chiz |
| 8 | nicul | ghòt |
| 9 | pir | ang |
| 10 | pol | kyän |
| 11 | poloyan | vänja |
| 12 | polonaw | braj |
| 13 | polochoy | kyävidas |
| 14 | polokhas | kyävèll |
| 15 | pologen | kyuni |
| 16 | polohod | kyävisald |
| 17 | polosowad | kyävichiz |
| 18 | polonicul | kyävijòt |
| 19 | polopir | kyäveng |
| 20 | nopolic | darand |
| 21 | nopoloyan | darandvi jan |
| 22 | nopolonaw | darandvi wegh |
| 30 | choypolic | dwaskyän |
| 33 | choypolochoy | dwaskyänvi dwas |
| 40 | khaspolic | wedarand |
| 50 | gempolic | byskyän |
| 60 | hobolic | dwasrand |
| 70 | subolic | chiskyän |
| 80 | nilpolic | fèldarand |
| 90 | pirpolic | änkyän |
| 100 | cambor | grus |
In both languages, the default form of a numeral is as an adjective. For Ardari, this requires adjective inflection for the first four, including changing for the gender of their head nouns. On the Isian side, every number but yan “one” will have a plural head noun, but there is otherwise nothing to worry about.
We can use numerals directly as nouns in Ardari, just like any adjective, but we can’t in Isian, since it doesn’t allow adjectives without head nouns. Instead, we can use the “dummy” noun at: naw at “two things”. (For “one”, we’d use the singular yan a.)
Creating higher numbers in Ardari is, surprisingly, fairly straightforward. As you can see in the table above, numbers like 21 are constructed using the linking conjunction -vi, which appears on everything but the last noun or adjective in the phrase. Thus, darandvi jan is literally “twenty and one”. This pattern extends throughout the system: 123 is grusvi darandvi dwas.
In Isian, things get a little hairier. Up to 109, you take the “tens” numeral, strip off the final -ic, add on a linking -o-, and add the “ones” numeral: nopolic “twenty” plus yan “one” equals nopoloyan “twenty-one”. Past that, you have to make a phrase like polopir cambor at wa nilpolochoy “1,983”, but this takes you all the way to 9,999.
For positively huge numbers, you need more numerals. Isian has two native higher powers: jagor “ten thousand” and ilicor “million”, which can be used just like cambor “hundred”. As an example, the large number 1,048,576 would be represented in Isian by the mouthful ilicor at wa khas jagor at wa nilpologen cambor at wa subolohod. Yes, our way looks more compact, but imagine writing it out.
Ardari instead has separate words for each power of ten up to a million: ulyad “thousand”, minyir “ten thousand”, ovòd “hundred thousand”, and akrèz “million”; these can be “stacked” into a -vi phrase with the others. Our same example in the paragraph above, 1,048,576, then becomes akrèzvi fèll minyirvi ghòt ulyadvi nibys grusvi chiskyänvi sald. (As a shorter alternative, one can simply recite the digits in order, putting yvi before the last: jan zu fèll ghòt nibys chiz yvi sald.)
That last example shows the Ardari word for zero, zu. Isian has one, too: anca. However, it has an added wrinkle in that it doesn’t work the same way as the other numerals. To say “zero” as a noun, instead of using anca at “zero things”, you say anocal, the Isian word for “nothing”.
Our number is up
That’s all there is to it for counting numerals in our conlangs. They’re fairly simple, mostly because I stuck to a decimal number system. If you want to use something more “exotic”, like base-12, well, have fun with that. I’ve tried, and it’s a lot harder than it looks. Still, the “dozenal” people don’t seem to mind. Also, there’s a lot of grammar stuff I could have added, and we haven’t covered ordinal numbers, but those can come later. We can count in our languages now, and that’s good enough for the time being.