Numbers and Counting

Count out loud in Siargaonon and you are speaking three hundred years of history without meaning to.

Two number systems, both correct

Siargaonon carries two full sets of numerals, and speakers move between them without thinking. Ten is napulo — the native Visayan word. Ten is also diyes — straight from Spanish diez, left behind by three centuries of colonial rule and never given back.

Neither is more correct than the other. Which one arrives in your mouth often depends on what you're counting. Money and prices lean Spanish; a fisherman counting his catch is more likely to reach for the native word. If you learn only one set, learn both anyway — you will hear both within an hour of arriving.

How much, and how many

English uses "how much" for money and "how many" for things. Siargaonon splits it differently, and the split is worth getting right.

Pila alone asks how much — the price, the amount, the fare. Pila an plete? is what you say to a habal-habal driver before you get on the back of his motorbike.

To ask how many — a count of discrete things — you need pila kabook. The kabook is doing the counting work; without it you have asked for a price, not a number.

And to ask someone's age: Pila may imo edad? — note the may again, because an age is something you have, not something a thing is.

The words themselves — 41 entries