Download Sheldon - UK Linguistics Olympiad

Linguistics at Corpus
Techniques and Strategies
Neil Sheldon
Manam pile
You have to work out who lives
at A, B, C, D, E from the
information given below.
Number systems
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Many European languages, though they use base 10, have
special words for some or all of the numbers from 11 to 19
French uses a mix of base 10 and 20: quatre-vingt-dix-neuf
= 99. (But nonante-neuf = 99 in Swiss French!)
German puts the units first: neunundneunzig = 99
Danish counts in multiples of 20 (and puts the units first). So
99 is ‘9 plus 4-and-a-half times 20’
Huli uses base 15. So 99 is ‘6 times 15 plus 9 of the next 15’
In Ndom, 99 is ‘(36 × 2) and 18 and 6 and 3’
Old Welsh: 99 is ‘4 plus (5 and 10) plus 4 times 20’
Tongan just uses the digits: 99 is ‘hiva hiva’
http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/language/number.html
Number systems
eleven plus two
=
twelve plus one
is an
eleven plus two anagram
of twelve plus one
Is that just a happy coincidence?
It stems from the etymology of twelve and eleven.
eleven = left one, twelve = two left, where ‘left’ means
left over from ten
Umbu-Ungu numbers
Umbu-Ungu numbers
Umbu-Ungu numbers
so yepoko is not 1
talu, telu, yepoko
= 1, 2, 3 in some
order?
Umbu-Ungu numbers
telu = 1
talu = 2
yepoko = 3
nga means –4
rurepo = 12
malapu = 16
tokapu = 24
alapu = 28
polangipu = 32
Basque
Basque
Teop
Cree
Syllabics
Catalan plurals
Transcendental Algebra