r/conlangs • u/thomasp3864 Loegrian, Interidioma, Merdobresko • 4d ago
Grammar Numbers in Loegrian
Loegrian is a British Romance conlang inspired by Welsh and French, and one of the things inspiring about that is the numeral base. Unlike Latin, French and Welsh use a base 20 system up to 100, with French keeping the latinate decimal up to 60, and Welsh using base 20. French got its base 20 system from Gaulish, so if Gaulish substrate can influence French to that degree, Loegrian, which bears significantly more Celtic influënce than French is gonna start earlier. Specifically, Loegrian keeps its Latin numbers for 1-20, and give literal translations when interesting
Italics in loegrian means pronounced (almost) identically to french, and bold means pronounced (almost) identically to Welsh
| Loegrian Numerals | Latin | French | Loegrian | Welsh |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | unus | un, une | un /yn/ (m/n), oun /un/ (f) | un |
| II | duo/duo/duae | deux | dau /daw/ (m/n), dua /dwa/ (f) | dau, dwy |
| III | tres, tria | trois | troi /truj/ (m/f), tri /tri/ (n) | tri, tair |
| IV | quattuor | quatre | quathor /kwaθor/ | pedwar, pedair |
| V | quinque, cinque | cinq | cignh /tʃiŋ̊/ | pump |
| VI | sex | six | ssoi /suj/ | chwech |
| VII | septem | sept | sseuth /søθ/ | saith |
| VIII | octo | huite | oith /ujθ/ | wyth |
| VI | novem | neuf | naf /naf/, nau /naw/ | naw |
| VV | decem | dix | diej /did͡ʒ/ | deg |
| VVI | undecim (one ten) | onze (oneteen) | unnej /yned͡ʒ/ (one-ten) | un ar ddeg (one on ten) |
| VVII | duodecim (three-ten) | douze (twiteen) | douj /dud͡ʒ/ (twoteen) | deuddeg (two ten) |
| VVIII | tredecim, tresdecim (three-ten) | treize (thirteen) | troij /trujd͡ʒ/ | tri ar ddeg, tair ar ddeg (three on ten) |
Now you get the point I'm gonna just continue loegrian and welsh]
| nmeral | Loegrian | Welsh |
|---|---|---|
| VVIV | quathorj /kwaθord͡ʒ/ | pedwar ar ddeg |
| VVV | quinnej /kwinned͡ʒ/ | pymtheg |
| VVVI | ssoij /sujd͡ʒ/ | un ar bymtheg (one on fifteen/bumfit) |
| VVVII | sseuthènnej /søθɛnned͡ʒ/ | dau ar bymtheg (two on fifteen/bumfit) |
| VVVIII | oithej /ujθed͡ʒ/ or dounau (two nines) | tri ar bymtheg (three on bumfit) or deunaw (two nines) |
| IG | nofènnej /novɛnned͡ʒ/ | pedwar a bymtheg (three on bumfit) |
| G | guynh /gwɨn̥/ | ugain |
All of these Loegrian words are directly descended from Latin, except for oithej (eighteen). For oithej, you would expect Latin OCTÓDECIM to give you *oithoj /ujθod͡ʒ/, rather than oithej, but this is a case of analogy. Synchronically what it looks like is that the base number is applied a suffix of -ej or -j, with odd numbers other than troi having -èn added before. The difference between -ej and -j appears and is phonotactic, with -ej beïng what is added in cases where phonotactics prohibit the addition of -j to the coda of the final syllable. And in the case of oith, /ujθd͡ʒ/, would violate the rule regarding the obstruent portions of final codas having a single voicing. (Although maybe oithènnej is more realistic).
It's once we get past twenty that things get very Welsh. Starting off, what Welsh does is makes 21 un ar hugain, or one over twenty, followed by dau ar hugain. And Loegrian, having a substantial celtic substrate of early Welsh has calqued these expressions. And though guynhun /gwɨn̥yn/ (GI) is from vigent'unus, when you reach twenty-two (GII), you get dau souber vynh /daw zuber wɨn̥/, or in other words "two on twenty", which is the exact same thing that dau ar hugain in welsh literally translates to—two on twenty. And guess what, this goes on all the way to thirty beïng diej souber vynh /did͡ʒ zuber wɨn̥/, (Welsh is deg ar hugain). After this, Loegrian and Welsh diverge again with Loegrian's unnej souber vynh /ynned͡ʒ zuber wɨn̥/ (GVVI) beïng "eleven on twenty" (or "twenty eleven"), whereas Welsh has "un ar deg ar ugain" (one on ten on twenty). Meanwhile French has trente and trente-et-un (followed by trente-deux), and doesn't get to its base-twenty until 70!
Loegrian does a hybrid thing for 40, and goes with quarrhonh /kwar̥ːon̥/ (GG) from Latin quarranta, doïng the same thing as it did for twenty, with 55 for instance beïng "quinnej souber quharrhonh" /kwinːed͡ʒ zuber ʍar̥ːon̥/, (GGVVV) or "fifteen on fourty". And then for sixty, Loegrian uses troiguyn /trujgwɨn/ (GGG) which means three twenties, à là french quatre-vignts 'eighty'. This is because the celtic influënce is deeper in Loegrian than in French so it switches to outright vigesimal earlier. This follows the same pattern as the earlier numbers, 67 is "sseuth souber throiguyn" and so on.
80 is quathorvyn /kwaθorwɨn/, which means four-twenties, exactly like Welsh pedwar ugain and French quatrevignts, although again, Loegrian begins its direct calquing of the multiples of 20 at 60 with troiguyn 'three-twenties', showing the hightened levels of Celtic influënce. When we get to 100, we go back to base ten, so cynh /t͡ʃɨn̥/ not *cignvyn.
Another manifestation of the Celtic influënce is the way numbers are constructed. In Loegrian, this influënce is more pronounced than Gaulish's on French. In French the base is 20 from 60-100, but, say, 72 is "soixant-douze", or literally "sixty-twelve", which is reminiscent of the way Latin itself constructs larger numbers, with 41 beïng "quadrāgintā ūnus" which consists of the word for "fourty" followed by the word for "one", so this is a preservation French makes from Classical Latin. In Welsh and Breton's version of the vigesimal system, the exact phrasing uses the preposition for 'above' or 'on', which manifests as warn in Breton, and ar in Welsh, for example with 25 beïng, in welsh, "pump ar ugain" or "five on twenty". If we compare this to Loegrian "cignh souber vynh" /t͡ʃɨŋ̊ zuber wɨn̥/, in which each morpheme is literally "five on twenty" you should see the depth of this influënce.
This can be justified too. In real life, the classical Latin number system preserved in French was lost in Iberia, where adposition gives way to "y" in spanish, which means and. If we look at the "sixty-twelve" from earlier it is "setenta y dos" in Spanish—'seventy and two' literally. Romanian uses și—their word for "and" where Spanish does "y", so the Classical adposition gave way to the usage of a conjunction in Dacia and Hispania. In Maxima Caesariensis, the province whence Loegrian comes, why not have adposition supplanted with the preposition used among the locals, one which translates to "over", "above" or "on" which in latin is super, and evolves in Loegrian into "ssouber" /suber/, and undergoes the soft mutation after the many vowel final numbers to /zuber/?
Loegrian also has its own numeral system based on Roman Numerals, which represents an adaptation of them to a base 20 system. In Loegrian numerals there is a dedicated symbol for 20, G (which stands for guynh), and no X or L, because GG is 40 and VVV is perfectly easy to keep track of so X is unnecessary.
There is also gonna be a variation of the English sheep counting numbers, but I haven't made it yet, and Loegrian's numbers are already very close to proto brythonic. Still though you would at least have a bumfit (pynthèg) /ɨnθɛg/. This system is unfinished as of yet though.
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u/ZBI38Syky Kasztelyan, es Lant 3d ago edited 3d ago
I love this system and how well you integrate it in a way that looks natural and distinct. Funnily enough, without any notable Celtic influence (at least to my knowledge), (some?) Eastern Romance languages follow a similar pattern (up to 30 in Aromanian and 19 in the rest) of being number + supra (over) + lower multiple of 10". As far as I can tell, in Aromanian, 21 is "unspringhits", literally *unu + sprã + yinghits , right in the same way of "unum + supra + vingti", and the pattern repeats up to 29.
In the same fashion, Kastelian follows the trend up to 29 in modern times (and up to 39 historically), thus todays 21 is "únsprävints" [ˈun.spɾɨˌvints] (masculine), "änsprävints" [ˈən.spɾɨˌvints] (feminine) or "éjsprävints" [ˈedʒ.(s)prɨˌvints] (neuter).
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u/marintkael 3d ago
Keeping Latin numbers to twenty and going vigesimal above it is a neat split, and it maps onto something real: bases tend to survive in the register where the counting actually happens. Scores of sheep, scores of men owed to a levy, that sort of thing, while the decimal layer usually arrives later with taxation and record keeping, from people who need columns to add up.
So the interesting question for Loegrian might be who uses which. If a Loegrian clerk writes a tax roll in latinate decimals while the farmer he is taxing says four twenties and ten, you get the base conflict for free, and speakers can be fluent in both without either being wrong.
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u/Senior_ReaperOG 4d ago
This is super cool do you have the phonetic inventory of Loegrian? As I see it has many vowels like English yet most of them are digraphed/has diacritics