The Next Twenty Numbers
After twenty, we add "iñuiññaq" to the front of the number and start from the beginning until we get to thirty-nine.
| English | Iñupiaq | Literally | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Twenty-one | Iñuiññaq Atausiq | Twenty and One | |
| Twenty-two | Iñuiññaq Malġuk | Twenty and Two | |
| Twenty-three | Iñuiññaq Piŋasut | Twenty and Three | |
| Twenty-four | Iñuiññaq Sisamat | Twenty and Four | |
| Twenty-five | Iñuiññaq Tallimat | Twenty and Five | |
| Twenty-six | Iñuiññaq Itchaksrat | Twenty and Six | |
| Twenty-seven | Iñuiññaq Tallimat Malġuk | Twenty and Five and Two | |
| Twenty-eight | Iñuiññaq Tallimat Piŋasut | Twenty and Five and Three | |
| Twenty-nine | Iñuiññaq Quliŋŋuġutaiḷaq | Twenty and Almost Ten | |
| Thirty | Iñuiññaq Qulit | Twenty and Ten | |
| Thirty-one | Iñuiññaq Qulit Atausiq | Twenty and Ten and One | |
| Thirty-two | Iñuiññaq Qulit Malġuk | Twenty and Ten and Two | Not Available |
| Thirty-three | Iñuiññaq Qulit Piŋasut | Twenty and Ten and Three | Not Available |
| Thirty-four | Iñuiññaq Akimiaġutaiḷaq | Twenty and Almost Fifteen | Not Available |
| Thirty-five | Iñuiññaq Akimiaq | Twenty and Fifteen | |
| Thirty-six | Iñuiññaq Akimiaq Atausiq | Twenty and Fifteen and One | Not Available |
| Thirty-seven | Iñuiññaq Akimiaq Malġuk | Twenty and Fifteen and Two | Not Available |
| Thirty-eight | Iñuiññaq Akimiaq Piŋasut | Twenty and Fifteen and Three | Not Available |
| Thirty-nine | Malġukipiaġutaiḷaq | Almost Two Twenties | Not Available |
| Forty | Malġukipiaq | Two Twenties |
A Base 20 System
In the table, you can see that we really just repeated the entire 1-20 sequence all over again, just with the word iñuññaq in front of each word. This is very similar to how we go through the "twenties" in English: twenty-one, twenty-two, etc. Also similar to English, we build words from the biggest words first, then getting smaller as we go along.
One thing you might have noticed is that thirty is said in the manner of "twenty and ten." One challenging thing about adjusting to the Iñupiaq counting system is that tens are not necessarily significant beyond the initial twenty. Tens do not represent a change in any place value in the same way that they do in the English counting system and other Base 10 systems.
Another thing that you might have noticed is that we went through the entire one-to-twenty sequence again before we stopped using from iñuññaq and started using the word for forty, malġukipiaq. This is a good example of why it can be challenging to explore numbers that are higher than twenty: we are not just translating from one language to another language, but also one number base to another number base. Malġuk is the word for two, but malġukipiaq represents forty instead of twenty, so this might seem confusing if you only think about the language.
Money Model and Breaking Down Words
The Iñupiaq counting system is base-20 and has a sub-base of 5. Just as we saw in the last section, we can think of each word for five (tallimat, qulit and akimiaq) in terms of five dollar bills. So what happens when we would have four five-dollar bills? We can change it out for a twenty dollar bill! As we'll see in the next section, we can expand on this to help visualize how the number bases are translated between the base-10 English counting system and the base-20 Iñupiaq counting system.
As mentioned earlier we start with the biggest numbers first, then gradually get smaller. In the "Money Model," we start with our twenty-dollar bills, then our five-dollar bills, then our one-dollar bills. If we put the word for 32 as an example, we start with iñuññaq, then add qulit and finish with malġuk to get iñuññaq qulit malġuk.
Like with the values of five, we express the number before a factor of 20 as that number plus -ġutaiḷaq. We see an example of this in the word for 39, which is malġukipiaġutaiļaq: almost forty. If we think about it using our "Money Model," we'll add -ġutaiļaq any time that we have 3 five-dollar bills and 4 one-dollar bills.
Iñupiaq often combines base words with these kinds of suffixes, or post-bases (not to be confused with number bases, which are completely separate of this) to make some pretty big words. To make the word for 39, we combine the base work malġuk, drop the "k" at the end, then add the post-base -kipiaq (which marks the next place value) to represent the word for forty, malġukipiaq. Then we take that word, drop the "q" at the end of it and add -ġutaiļaq to get "almost forty)," malġukipiaġutaiļaq.
Let's break that down:
1. Start with malġuk
2. Drop the "k" at the end to get the base word: malġu-
3. Add the post-base -kipiaq to get our word for 40: malġukipiaq
4. Drop the "q" at the end of malġukipiaq to get our new base: malġukipia-
5. Add the post-base for "almost" which is -ġutaiļaq to get our word for 39: malġukipiaġutaiļaq.
References:
Maclean, E. A. (2014). Iñupiaq to English Dictionary. University of Alaska Press.