Lexember 3, 2022
Welcome to the Lexember Challenge!
Every year, conlangers can take the opportunity for the month of December to challenge ourselves to add a new word to our conlang’s lexicon.
What word have you coined today? Any cultural or associated worldbuilding notes? Tell us about your inspiration!
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3 thoughts on “Lexember 3, 2022”
Day 3, numbers 8-10!
8 – watha /watʰa/
9 – rama /ɹama/
10 – rasmele /ɹasmele/
“Rasmele” (ten) is composed of “ras” (two) and “mel” (five) with the e possibly being a vestige of a possessive or sthg similar.
I don’t 100 % grock non-Base-10 systems tbh, but I was thinking about the traces of Base-20 in French and Danish, and decided this language is Base-10 with traces of Base-5 in the numerals.
Still haven’t decided how that affects higher numbers i.e. whether 17 is “two-five-seven” or “three-five-two”, etc. Thoughts?
I think there was once a special word for 25 (similar to 100) but when they switched to base-10 they lost it and started just saying melmele (five-five) for it, but maybe 50 is like, that older word with two as a prefix? I like that idea for some fun detail but maybe it’s too dorky?
I also decided “kal” (four) is actually “kaal” /kɑ:l/ because I wasn’t using enough of my vowels! I still need to check over the romanization of this language so all might change eventually.
Those are some fun potential complications. I do like kaal and the reason for the switch makes a lot of sense.
I kind of like the idea of using two-five-seven normally, like in mathematics because they’re really thinking it’s ten-seven but something specialized or traditional like cooking or an industry sticking to three-five-two, but that’s just me. I think you could try it both ways and just see which you like better and feels right.
Oh, that’s a fun suggestion! Not quite the same but like, here we say “arton” for “eighteen” but in old texts and some variants like Swedish in Finland you’ll often hear the older “aderton” instead. So maybe it’s sthg like that. Old texts, maybe religious or formal ones, ones related to nobility, or classic lit/poetry, might retain the three-five-two format, and perhaps that’s bled over into certain domains like maybe cooking or artsy stuff or wev, but more everyday use uses two-five-seven. Thanks for the idea!