Counting in Sindarin

Does anyone know numbers in Sindarin? I could only find one (min) in the dictionary.

Here is one through ten for you.

• min¹ “one”
• minui “first”
• tâd “two”
• tadui “second”
• neledh “three”
• nelui “third”
• canad “four”
• canthui “fourth”
• leben “five”
• levnui “fifth”
• eneg “six”
• enchui “sixth”
• odog “seven”
• othui “seventh”
• tolodh “eight”
• tollui “eighth”
• neder “nine”
• nedrui “ninth”
• pae “ten”
• paenui “tenth”

Wow! Thank you so much!

If you wanted to make, say, 18, would you say paetolodh? Or paetollui? Or is it another word completely?

pae-a-tholodh "ten and eight"

Thank you!

I do not think pae-a-tholodh is the best option. (Disclaimer: very little is actually attested (i.e. found in Tolkien's own notes) when it comes to numbers in Sindarin, so most of the following is extrapolated.)

tl;dr: I would recommend tolob or paedolodh for "eighteen".

There are exactly two numbers above 10 attested in the Sindarin corpus: minib "eleven" and ýneg "twelve". The latter is not helpful for figuring out how other numbers are formed, because it has its own special derivation (it essentially means "two sixes"). So insofar as numbers attested in Sindarin go, we only have minib to go off of, which is not the best foundation because it is not inconceivable for 11 (and 12) to behave different from higher numbers - see English eleven, twelve vs. thirteen, fourteen, etc. This slight uncertainty is why I am not going to say that pae-a-tholodh is wrong, because there is a chance that it could be right - but IMHO that chance is slim.

We do have another source of information though, and that is Quenya, where the -teen numbers are well attested. In fact, we can see that S. minib is a direct cognate of Q. minque, both deriving from Common Eldarin ✶minikwē. This is informative, because Quenya's minque is formed similarly to higher attested -teen numbers: nelque "13", lepenque "15", etc., all formed with -que. Since Sindarin has minib as an equivalent to Quenya's minque, it stands to reason that other numbers would also be cognates.

This is not the only valid option, however. Quenya, in fact, has a second attested series of -teen numbers, e.g. quainel "13", quaican "14", quailepen "15", etc. Here the first element quai- is a derivative of the word for "10" and a cognate to Sindarin pae(n). Based on this, Sindarin might also have this alternate series of numbers. It is also possible, however, that Sindarin retained only one of them, or a mixture of both; it is also technically possible that this alternate series is a Quenya innovation that never occurred in Sindarin at all. I leave it up to the readers to make up their own mind here.

Without going into the details of the derivations, here are the reconstructed numbers following from the discussion above (attested words in bold):

11 - minib / paevin

12 - ýneg / paedad

13 - neleb / paenel

14 - canab / paegan

15 - lebemp / paeleben

16 - eneph / paeneg

17 - odoph / paenodog

18 - tolob / paedolodh

19 - nederph / paeneder

These forms are, to the best of my knowledge, generally accepted in the Neo-Sindarin community.

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Unrelated to the above, two notes on the ordinal numbers provided by Celebrinor above (ordinals = first, second, third, etc.):

First, note that specifically "1st", "2nd", and "3rd" also have archaic forms main, taid, nail, respectively. The forms minui, tadui, and nelui are the result of later regularisation.

Secondly, and more importantly, there's a nuance regarding the words for "fourth", "sixth", and "eighth" which mustn't be ignored. This has to do with the historical development of a specific type of consonant clusters and the spelling conventions surrounding them. I won't dive into the full details, but what's important here is internal consistency. In the list provided by Celebrinor above, the forms canthui and enchui are inconsistent with tollui. Below are the possible internally-consistent sets - pick one and don't mix them. The first set is what I would recommend using.

• cannui, engui, tollui

• canthui, enchui, tolthui

The only problem with that is that Sindarin uses a base twelve system for counting, so saying "numbers above ten" doesn't apply, it doesn't work the same way. What we would call ten and eleven (in the decimal system) are their own entities. In modern dozenal, they are refered to as "dec" and "el" respectively, and the word for 10 (twelve in decimal) is "do". So basing numbers "above ten" off of what we decimilians transcribe as 11 and 12 is like assuming what 7 and 8 are going to be based off the words for four and five.

I can't say for certain how it would work in Sindarin, because much of it isn't attested, but in modern dozenal it would go "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, dec, el, do, do-one, do-two... do-dec, do-el, two-do, two-do-one... etc."

What I can say for certain is that they would not use "pae-a-tholodh" for 18, though. In a base ten system 18 is 10+8, but in a dozenal it is 12+6, so I assume they would say either "ýneg-eneg", "ýneg-a-eneg", or "eneg-a-ýneg". Note, when written in a base twelve system 18 would actually be the equivalent to twenty of the base ten. 1 (12) + 8 (8)= 20.

However, there is a caveat. Originally the elves did use a base ten system, but changed it later for ease of splitting (more factors in 12 than 10). Thus, we still have words for groups of 10's e.g. tadchaen/tadpaen (two tens) depending on which source you use for the word for "ten". But, that would likely only be used in purchasing of goods, like how our eggs are sold in dozens, rather than by the tens.

NoirAnarchy, there are some inaccuracies in what you said.

Sindarin uses a base twelve system for counting

This is false. For one, Tolkien never actually said anything particular about the numeral system in Sindarin specifically, as far as I can recall. When he discussed decimal vs. decimal counting systems, he referred to the Elvish languages as a whole. More importantly, he made three things clear:

1. The Eldar used both decimal and duodecimal systems.
2. The decimal system was the older system and the duodecimal arose only later.
3. They retained the decimal system as the standard system used for counting, whereas the duodecimal was a "theoretical interest" (his words). Duodecimal terms (or really rather senary terms) were, however, commonly used for 12, 18, 24, 72, and 144 in the otherwise decimal system used in everyday situations.

You acknowledged (2):

Originally the elves did use a base ten system, but changed it later for ease of splitting (more factors in 12 than 10).

However, I recall no statement by Tolkien that would indicate that they "changed" to the duodecimal system "for ease of splitting", nor that the decimal system was abandoned. Tolkien actually explicitly stated that the Elvish numeral system remained firmly based on the decimal system:

At a (probably) later period the Eldar now provided with a numeral system firmly based on the manual 'decimals' 5, 10 (Note 4) became interested in sixes, and a word for 6 × 2 (12) was already devised before the end of the Common Eldarin period (since it occurs in Quenya, Telerin and Sindarin). [VT47/16; bold emphasis is mine, italics in the source]

And this "Note 4" (an author's note) reads:

So it remained. In spite of their later predominant [?and theoretical] interest in and use of six-twelve (as group units) they did not develop a complete duodecimal nomenclature, though they invented (after the Common Eldarin period for numbers above 12) special names for the multiples of six × six. Of these, 18 and 24 were also in daily use, as well as the 'gross' 144 (12 × 12), and 72 half-gross. [VT47/17, note 4; emphasis is mine]

So saying that Sindarin abandoned the decimal system in favour of the duodecimal system is not based on Tolkien's own words about this. The decimal system was, in all likelihood, the standard system used in daily matters by all Elves.

That being said, a duodecimal system did nonetheless exist, so let's talk about how it would be used (or, rather, the best we can plausibly reconstruct for it). You said:

I assume they would say either "ýneg-eneg", "ýneg-a-eneg", or "eneg-a-ýneg".

These suggestions are not equivalent to one another. Setting aside the question of whether or not ýneg is the correct term to use in a duodecimal system (there is also the root RASAT, which Tolkien devised specifically for the base-12 numerals, which would yield ᴺS. rast "dozen"), we have good reason to believe that the general format of numerals in Elvish is to place the digits before the tens/dozens; furthermore, we have sufficient evidence of special -teen forms in the decimal system to suspect that thee duodecimal system might have equivalent compound terms for numbers between dozen-and-one and two-dozen (but I find it unlikely, see below). One the other hand, placing a digit after a higher order number is fairly certainly going to indicate multiples of the higher order number.

With these things in mind:

• The phrase ýneg eneg is fairly certainly supposed to be parsed as 12 × 6 (six-dozen, i.e. a half-gross).

• The phrase ýneg-a-eneg is technically maybe possible in spirit for "dozen and six", but, as I said in my previous post regarding pae-a-tholodh, the chances are slim. The reason I say "in spirit" is because it is grammatically wrong, and should rather be ýneg ah eneg.

• The phrase eneg-a-ýneg - one grammatically corrected to eneg ah ýneg - would be a solid option for "dozen and six", with the other solid alternatives being simply eneg ýneg and the equivalent options with rast (i.e. eneg a rhast / eneg rast).

The reason I don't recommend dozenal equivalents of the compound -teens is because reconstructing such forms runs into issues. In fact, for the same reason I would not recommend compounded equivalents for multiples of the dozen, though those are slightly less problematic. Since this response is already very long, I won't dive into the phonological details. I'll simply exemplify my recommendation for the duodecimal system in Sindarin:

"Two-gross seven-dozen and eleven" (decimal 383 / duodecimal 27B) = minib rest odog hyst dâd.

You also said:

we still have words for groups of 10's e.g. tadchaen/tadpaen (two tens) depending on which source you use for the word for "ten". [my emphasis]

These two forms for "twenty" are wrong whichever way you look at them. They would be tachaen if the root for ten is KAYAN and taphaen if the root is KWAY(AM), and the choice between them is not entirely free for the reader - Tolkien rejected KAYAN and replaced it with KWAY(AM). By the way, this newer root is directly related to the root KWA "full, complete", which is another strong indication of the intended primacy of the decimal system.

I hope this clarifies things. Let me know if you would like to elaborate on anything.