Spoken Sibe by Zikmundová Veronika

Author:Zikmundová, Veronika
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Karolinum Press
Published: 2014-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

NUMERALS

The system of numerals in spoken Sibe is relatively simple as compared to both literary Manchu and Mongolian. While literary Manchu has four kinds of suffixes to form numeral classes (Haenisch 1986, pp. 45–46) and the Chahar dialect of Mongolian, according to Sechenbaatar, has three suffixed and two lexically marked classes (Sechenbaatar 2003, p. 70), in spoken Sibe there is, besides the basic – cardinal numerals, a single suffix -či, which forms ordinal numerals.

The manner of using numerals in spoken Sibe calls for a short commentary. In many ways it resembles the situation of most of the non-Chinese ethnicities in China, and in particular the speakers of the Altaic languages. It is probably due to the extreme simplicity, both phonetic and morphological, of the Chinese numeric system that leads most speakers of these languages to use Chinese expressions in everyday speech to form constructions more complex than a single word.1 Most speakers, therefore, including the younger generation, have a passive knowledge of the single digits up to 9, and at times culturally important numerals such as 15 (the full moon). Generally speaking, people who grew up before the Cultural Revolution, except for the oldest speakers with literary education, use Sibe words for single numerals but Chinese words for more complex constructions (dates, numbers over 10, and counting operations, for example) and in the numbering of almost anything. Speakers who grew up during the Cultural Revolution and later usually know only the first two Sibe numerals əm ‘one’ and ju ‘two’. Only older, educated and “self-conscious” speakers use Sibe numerals in complex forms such as dates and in arithmetic operations.

Some younger speakers are familiar with some numerals used in proverbs and sayings (e.g. nadən saʁənč əm čiškə bətkəf jəm vajəqů. ‘Seven girls would not finish eating one chicken leg.’)

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