Number words in Fenekere
The numbers in Fenekere are based on the alphabet, which makes the system base 31. The consonants count from zero to 30, and the vowels are used to mark decimal placement. This covers whole numbers only, and has an upward limit of over 2 million, but with a definite upward limit. ‘e’ represents the “ones” digit. ‘a’ represents the 31s digit, and so on. To signify that a character is a number it is written backwards, or with the vowel first in the romanization, like so, ‘ef’, meaning “one”.
To use a number in a sentence, however, it must be given some grammatical markers. In this way it is turned into a particle. This works similarly to the auxiliary words above, but with some slight differences. The typical method is to attach two syllables to the end of the number, each starting with a ‘ʔ’ or glottal stop. The first appended syllable tells the part of speech that the number falls into. This is usually a ‘u’, meaning it is an adjective or adverb. The second appended syllable tells the part of speech that it is modifying, like the third syllable does in a root word. So, to say that there is one of something, or that something happens once, you’d render it thusly:
ef’u’o or ef’u’a
If you want to say that something happens first, you would turn it into a prefix, like so:
ef’uu-
A list of the numbers from 0 to 31 are as follows:
e’, ef, ed, ek, el, en, ep, er, ez, ev, et, eh, ex, ew, ej, es, ey, eq, ecc, erl, em, eg, esh, epl, eth, err, eng, etl, ektl, ech, eb, a’
32 is a’ef. a’e’ is a valid number but is equal to a’ and as such isn’t usually written or spoken except when making equations appear more readable. Pronunciation of these numbers includes an unmarked shortened version of the vowel ‘e’ after each consonant, effectively making them two syllables. So, stress is put on the first vowel, and the second is choked short, meaning that e’ is pronounced something like |ɛʔɛ|. In this way, the consonant is pronounced the same way at the end of a syllable as it is at the beginning.