Native Berlean Numbers
Berlean has two types of numbering systems. The first of which is their native system which uses base-eight. The numerals used to write the native numbers are further broken down into an eight-bit binary system where an empty circle represents a 0 and a marked circle represents a 1. The native numbers are primarily used for basic counting and with measure words. The bigger numbers are rarely used.
Numeral | Pronunciation | Arabic Binary | Arabic Octal | Arabic Decimal |
ဝွိ | ရီမ (liem) | 000 | 0 | 0 |
ဝွီ | စီခ (siek) | 001 | 1 | 1 |
ဓွိ | ငှဧ (nhie) / ရီင (lien) | 010 | 2 | 2 |
ဓွီ | စေိမ (surm) | 011 | 3 | 3 |
ဝ္ဓိ | ပဝု (bur) | 100 | 4 | 4 |
ဝ္ဓီ | ပစီခ (brsiek) | 101 | 5 | 5 |
ဓ္ဓိ | ပငှဧ (brnhie) | 110 | 6 | 6 |
ဓ္ဓီ | ပဇေိမ (brzurm) | 111 | 7 | 7 |
ဝွီဝွိ | စီခစဥ (sirksr) | 001 000 | 10 | 8 |
ဓွိဝွိ | ငှီစဥ (nhirs) | 010 000 | 20 | 16 |
ဓွီဝွိ | စမဧ (srmie) | 011 000 | 30 | 24 |
ဝ္ဓိဝွိ | ပရဧု(brlir) | 100 000 | 40 | 32 |
ဝ္ဓီဝွိ | ပစီခဥ (brsirksr) | 101 000 | 50 | 40 |
ဓ္ဓိဝွိ | ပငှီစဥ (brnhirs) | 110 000 | 60 | 48 |
ဓ္ဓီဝွိ | ပိဇမဧ (burzmie) | 111 000 | 70 | 56 |
ဝွီဝွိဝွိ | ပြဂဧ (blrgie) | 001 ✕ 1000² | 100 | 64 |
ဝွီဝွိဝွိဝွိ | ငတု (nar) | 001 ✕ 1000³ | 1,000 | 512 |
ဝွီ၊ဝွိဝွိဝွိဝွိ | ပါရီခ (baliek) | 001 ✕ 1000⁴ | 10,000 | 4096 |
- The number two has two forms; ရီင (lien) is used with measure words.
Sacred and Auspicious Numbers
58 (510) (1012) : the most basic number of cyclicality, symmetry, and wholeness; a very lucky number.
108 (810) (0010002) : the number of liem, infinity, and cultivation, combining 1 for the mysterious feminine, Goddess Meagler, and 0 for wholeness and impartiality.
118 (910) (0010012) : the number of lam, desires, and manifestations; the most inauspicious and unlucky number.
148 (1210) (0011002) : this number is both symmetrical and balanced and thought of as the number of external and intermediary love, resulting from the number having many factors and the sum of its digits equaling five.
228 (1810) (0100102) : this number signifies the coming of age in Mhar culture, when one begins to seek enlightenment and cultivation on their own without the guidance of their parents, the age at which one must truly experience the struggles of life and learn to accept them.
2528 (17010) (0101010102) : a very auspicious number of pure balance signifying enlightenment or a struggle towards enlightenment and realization of oneself; the sum of its digits equal nine, the number of lam, signifying the delicate balance that must be maintained for enlightenment, and how the line between realization of self (self-confidence) and loss of self (self-conceit) is very thin and dependent on ones acceptance of failure and the other virtues of liem.
4018 (25710) (1000000012) : this number is a long-form alternative to 5, as the sum of its digits equal 5 and it is both prime and symmetric.
4718 (31310) (1001110012) : this number is highly auspicious as it is both symmetrical and prime; it represents the ideal and true realization of external and intermediary love as the sum of its digits are 148 (1210); its binary form is usually braided into the hair of newly weds as a symbol of their intermediary love.
6738 (44310) (1101110112) : this number is the highest symmetrical prime written with three digits and is thus highly auspicious, representing immortality and perfect purity, the sum of its digits equaling 208 (1610) the 2 signifying becoming one with the mysterious feminine.
Sino-Berlean Numbers
The Sino-Berlean number system originates from the Chinese numbering system and uses base-ten. These are primarily used for units of time and large numbers.
Numeral | Arnzr | Pronunciation | Arabic Equivalent |
၀ | 零 | ရီမ (liem) | 0 |
၁ | 一 | ဝီရ (yel) ဝီရ- (yel-) | 1 |
ပ | 二 | ငဧု (nir) ငီ- (nie-) | 2 |
ခ | 三 | စောမ (sarm) စာမ- (sam-) | 3 |
င | 四 | စဧု (sir) စီ- (sie-) | 4 |
ဒ | 五 | ဂဝု (gur) ဂေိ- (gur-) | 5 |
ဖ | 六 | ရိခ (luok) ရခ- (lrk-) | 6 |
ဎ | 七 | စီရ (siel) စီရ- (siel-) | 7 |
ဂ | 八 | ဖီရ (piel) ဖီရ- (piel-) | 8 |
န | 九/前 | ခဝု (kur) ခိ-/ခ- (kuo-/kr-) -ဇေီင (-zirn) | 9 |
၁၀ | 十 | ဇီဖ (ziep) | 10 |
၁၀၀ | 百 | ဖာခ (pak) | 100 |
၁၀၀၀ | 千 | စေီင (sirn) | 1,000 |
၁၊၀၀၀၀ | 萬 | မြောင (mlarn) | 10,000 |
- Every number has two forms, an independent form and a dependent form. The dependent forms are used as prefixes with greater place values (i.e. ဇီဖ ziep ‘ten’, ဖာခ pak ‘hundred’, etc.)
- The third form of nine, -ဇေီင -zirn, comes from Chinese 前 ‘before’ and is used in the ones place when combined with a tens place value. The meaning of -ဇေီင -zirn is not actually ‘nine’, but rather, ‘one before’; therefore, it must be used in combination with one number above the actual intended value. This leads to the construction (using Chinese numerals) X+1十前 for any value between 10 and 90 with a 9 in the ones place and 百前 for 99. For example, 19 is nieziebzirn (二十前) and 29 is samziebzirn (三十前). This construction is the result of homonymic conflict between 十五 (15) ziepkur (OB: dzip-ŋwəə) and 十九 (19) ziepkur (OB: dzip-kuu).
Measure Words
The following are the basic measure words used in Berlean. They generally precede their associated noun and are bound to a native number.
-င (-rn) – general measure word/suffix for inanimate things
Ex: ရီငင ကေီမ (lirnrn khirm) – “two houses”
ခတု (kar) – measure word for animate and moving things
Ex: စေိမးခတု ငါခဥ (surm-kar nark) – “three people”
မဝု (mur) – measure word for books and flat things
Ex: ပဇေိမးမဝု စီခ (brzurm-mur siek) – “seven books”
အဥ (thr) – measure word for thin, upright things
Ex: ပစီခးအဥ အာခဥ (brsiek-thr thark) – “five trees”
ရာမ (lam) – measure word for flowers, mushrooms
Ex: ပငှဧးရာမ ဝီမှဥ (brnhie-lam yirmhr) – “six flowers”
ဖဝု (pur) – measure word for spherical, circular things
ပဝုးဖဝု ပြာခ (bur-pur blak) – “four stones”
စတု (sar) – measure word for cups, scoops of things
စီခးစတု ရှဧု (siek-sar lhir) – “one cup of water”
Conjunctions
NP₁, NP₂…NPₙ n+MW – “NP, NP… and NP”
Ex: ကင၊ မြာမ ရီငးခတု (khrn, mlam lien-kar) – “the dog and the cat”
Ex: စီဝဧ၊ ကေီမ၊ အာခဥ စေိမင (sieye, khirm, thark surmrn) – “the car, house, and the tree”
ဝီင (yen) – “(NP) and (NP)”
စီငီမ (sieniem) – “(VP) and (VP)”
ရှတု (lhar) – “NP or NP”
ငီမရှတု (niemlhar) – “VP or VP”
ငေါစဧ… ငေါဝီရ… (narsie… naryel…) – “if… then…”
ငတု… ငတု… (nar… nar…) – “if… then…”
စရီင (srlien) – “even though”
ဂယတု (grvar) – “thus,” “then”
ဇီဂဥ… အီမ (zirgr… thiem) – “in order to”
ငေါအီမ (nardhiem) – “because”
စေိဝီရ (suryel) – “therefore,” “so”
ရောဝီရ (laryel) – “but,” “however”
မရှတု (mrlhar) – “but,” “however”