Long and short numeric scales

The concept of long and short numeric scales has been coined by the French mathematician Geneviève Guitel in 1975. In the short scale, every new word greater than a million is one thousand times bigger than the previous term (the digits are grouped by three), whereas in the long scale, every new word greater than a million is one million times bigger than the previous term (the digits are grouped by six).

Star Wars languages

© Dark Lens, by Cédric Delsaux

The Star Wars linguistic universe counts many languages, either original or pidgins, most of them developed by Ben Burtt, sound designer for the Star Wars movies, from real languages recordings (English, Quechua, Tibetan, Zulu). Thus we find Bocce, Ewokese, Gunganese, Huttese, Jawaese, Neimoidian, and Shyriiwook. Mandalorian, or Mando’a, is an exception as it has a real grammar developed by the author Karen Traviss, as well as a writing system.

Star Trek languages

The linguistic richness of the Star Trek universe is particularly important, with three main languages: Klingon (designed by the linguist Marc Okrand), Romulan (or Rihannsu invented by the author Diane Duane), and Vulcan (developped by Mark R. Gardner). Those three artlangs have their own writing system, combining beauty and strangeness.

Counting in Salishan languages

Spoken in southern British Columbia (Canada) and in the north of Washington, in Oregon, Idaho and Montana states in the U.S., the Salishan languages form a continuum of about thirty languages. If the situation is worrying for many of them, others are supported by their communities and are at different levels of use, education and revitalization.

Among them, we find the Comox (400 speakers), Halkomelem (200 speakers), Saanich (about twenty speakers), Squamish (about fifteen speakers) and Klallam (about ten speakers) languages.

Counting in Kanak languages

Spoken in the New-Caledonia archipelago, the 28 Kanak languages belong to the Austronesian languages family. Among them, we find Nengone, Paicî and Nêlêmwa, which respectively count 9,000, 7,000 and 1,000 speakers older than 14 years.