Wednesday 10 August 2016

Counting

In Kuanua the word reading is used in two different ways. Firstly, it is used to mean count  (counting items) and secondly, it is used to mean read, as in reading a book or article. The word  for counting is niluluk and for count is luk. Here the main numbers and general counting method is written  for you to count in Kuanua.The letter a is usually added at the begining of most nouns. The number 1 is tikai but is one of those numbers you do not need to add the letter a in the beginning to change tikai into atikai. No, never! 1 is tikai, but 2 is urua to aurua and 3 is utul to autul and so forth. Counting 1 to 10 is tikai (1), aurua (2), autul (3), iwat/aiwat (4), ilima/ ailima (5), laptikai/alapitaka(6), lavurua/aluvurua (7), lavutul/alavutul (8), lavuvat/alavuvat (9), winun/awinun (10). A counting guide is presented below for counting and using higher numerals.

 Counting in Kuanua

10 - 1000

10  winun
20 ura winun
30 utula winun
40  iwat na winun
50 ilima na winun
60 laptikai na winun
70 lavurua na winun
80 lavutul na winun
90 lavuvat na winun
100 mar
200 ura mar
300 utula mar
400 iwat na mar
500 ilima na mar
600 laptikai na mar
700 lavurua na mar
800 lavutul na mar
900 lavuvat na mar
1000 - arip

1 - 10

1 tikai
2 urua
3 utul
4 iwat
5 ilima
6 laptikai
7 lavurua
8 lavutul
9 lavuwat
10 winun

11 - 1000+

11 winun ma tikai
21 ura winun ma tikai
31 utula winun ma tikai
41 iwat na winun ma tikai
51 ilima na winun ma tikai
61 laptikai na winun ma tikai
71 lavurua na winun ma tikai
81 lavutul na winun ma tikai
91 lavuvat na winun ma tikai
101 mar ma tikai
1001 arip ma tikai
2001 aura arip ma tikai
3001 autula arip ma tikai






5 comments:

  1. Hi Ismael,
    I learnt to count from one to ten in old Kuanua for a brief period in my life but I have since forgotten. However, I can only recall the first two numbers which were 'tikeh' (tikai) and 'uradeh' (two). I was wondering if you would be of assistance with the rest of the numbers.

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    1. Good suggestion Jane Schulze. The old way of counting (tikeh, uradeh...) is no longer in daily use. However, i will have to do some searching in order to record here.

      Cheers!

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  3. This is great. Can you also inform regarding ordinal numbers? I only know luaina as first and even that understanding may be off.

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    1. Thanks for the suggestion jimbothefirst. Will do another post on Counting using ordinal and cardinal numbers.

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