Counting in Yuanga-zuanga

Language overview

Yuanga-zuanga is a northern Kanak language that belongs to the South Oceanic language group, in the Austronesian language family. It is spoken in the Hoot ma Whaap customary area in the north of New Caledonia’s Grande Terre island, by around 2,400 speakers. It has two main variants: Zuanga, spoken in the communes of Kaala-Gomen and Paimboa, and Yuanga, spoken in Bondé and Ouégoua.

Due to lack of data, we can only count accurately up to 100 in Yuanga-zuanga. Please contact me if you can help me counting up from that limit.

Numerical classifiers in Yuanga

There are numerical classifiers for pieces of wood or sugar cane, bundles of herbs and bundles of leaves, round objects, bundles, banana hands, fish lines, quarters or halves of turtles or oxen in customary exchanges… Here we use the numerical classifier for animates (a-), which is very useful since it is used to count men. In fact, Yuang counts in base twenty, or vigesimal, where twenty literally means one man (a-xè êgu), i.e. ten fingers and ten toes.

Yuanga-zuanga numbering rules

Now that you’ve had a gist of the most useful numbers, let’s move to the writing rules for the tens, the compound numbers, and why not the hundreds, the thousands and beyond (if possible).

• Digits from one to nine are rendered by specific words, following a quinary system: a-xè [1], a-tru [2], a-kò [3], a-pa [4], a-ni [5], a-ni-ma-xe [6] (5+1), a-ni-ma-dru [7] (5+2), a-ni-ma-gò [8] (5+3), and a-ni-ma-ba [9] (5+4).
• Tens are formed on a vigesimal base (or base-20), the word for twenty, êgu, meaning man: truuçi [10], a-xè êgu [20] (one man), a-xè êgu bwa truuçi [30] (one man and ten, 20+10), a-tru êgu [40] (two men, 2*20), a-tru êgu bwa truuçi [50] (two men and ten, 2*20+10), a-kò êgu [60] (three men, 3*20), a-kò êgu bwa truuçi [70] (three men and ten, 3*20+10), a-pa êgu [80] (four men, 4*20), and a-pa êgu bwa truuçi [90] (four men and ten, 4*20+10).
• Compound numbers are formed starting with the ten, then the conjunction bwa, and the unit (e.g.: truuçi bwa a-ni [15], a-pa êgu bwa a-ni-ma-dru [87]).
• One hundred is a-ni êgu [100], or five men.

Write a number in full in Yuanga-zuanga

Let’s move now to the practice of the numbering rules in Yuanga-zuanga. Will you guess how to write a number in full? Enter a number and try to write it down in your head, or maybe on a piece of paper, before displaying the result.

Source

• Thematic and alphabetical dictionary of the Zuanga-Yuanga language (pdf, in French), by Isabelle Bril

Eastern Malayo-Polynesian languages

Araki, Cèmuhî, Māori, Marshallese, Mussau-Emira, Mwotlap, Nêlêmwa, Nengone, Paicî, Rapa Nui, Tahitian, Tongan (telephone-style), and Yuanga-zuanga.

Other supported languages

As the other currently supported languages are too numerous to list extensively here, please select a language from the full list of supported languages.