ōrū
You saw ōrū in yesterday’s post. It means 100 in base 8, so 64 in base 10. An alternate form is ānoru which emphasizes the 1 in 100. The –ū suffix is used several times in numbers and kinda sorta means “squared”. And since ōr is the stem for 10 (or 8 in decimal form), ōrū is ōr squared.
ŋō
The 18th Conlang Relay is almost done, so while we’re waiting, here are some numbers. We did ēnne (2) and ōraen (10,000) already.
ŋō is one of my favorite numbers. As a number it means 140 in base 8 (96 base 10), but really it simply means “lots”, which is why it is so short. The other way to say 140, the way to say it when counting is: ōru aþāllōr, as in ōru awījtōr aþōnne (137), ōru aþāllōr (140), ōru aþāllōr aþān (141).
So how did a little word like ŋō come to mean 140 (96)? Poetry. There is this famous poem about the journey from the Kēlen homeword to Tērjemar involving ŋō ōraen (many thousand) groups of people and their leaders, and then the poem goes on to name names, and there are 96 names listed. This implied to subsequent generations that there were 96 thousand groups.
ōraen
We’re on this sentence in the 17th Conlang Relay Text:
se jarūlōn to jakērþe ī ñi jakērþi ōraen rā xō;
The horse made a loud cry and then…ñi jakērþi ōraen rā xō;
ōraen is another number. It means 10,000 in base 8, which is 4096 in base ten, but really it’s not that exact, and “thousands” is a good translation. “and then thousands of horses went to there”. “came/went to there” is the literal translation, but “arrived” also works.
se jarūlōn to jakērþe ī ñi jakērþi ōraen rā xō;
The horse made a loud cry and then thousands of horses arrived.
ēnne
We’re still on this sentence in the 17th Conlang Relay Text:
il ñamma jacēha ja ñi sāen rā jakērþe ōl nō ā macūma il ñi jakērþe jasērre tō jōrwe ēnne;
When the man attempted to get on to the horse,
then ñi horse jasērre tō jōrwe ēnne.
We know ansērre, here modifying “horse” means “standing upright”. tō here acts as an instrumentative marker, so jōrwe ēnne is the means by which the horse stands upright. jōrwe looks very much like sōrwe which means “one’s legs”. The s– prefix is only used for animates, however, and the horse is not high enough on the personhood scale to qualify. So, an inanimate form is used instead. Then comes ēnne, which is the word for the number 2, telling us that the horse stood upright on two legs as opposed to one or three or some other number.
When the man attempted to get on to the horse, then the horse stood upright on two legs.