Maabu/numbers

Maarubaa Hilary, who has worked with Batchelor Press to get number charts. http://batchelorpress.com/catalog/cards-posters -gu yananga, go down to the number chart and select Gamilaraay or Yuwaalaraay.

The dictionary supplement has:

maabu   noun. number. ngay has been used for ‘number’ but this may cause confusion with ngay ‘my’, so maabu was developed by blending maal ‘one’ and bulaarr ‘two’. Cf. ‘alphabet’ which comes from the first two Greek letters.

Maabu was developed during preparation for the now balunhi Ma! Gamilaraay app.

It might be gaba to have a word for ‘count’. There is an element .ba-li in some verbs that seems to mean: say, make noise. There is one very clear example, (gayrr ‘name’ gayrrba-li ‘to name’) and others suggest this use (buu ‘wind’ buuba-li ‘fart’). There are clearer examples of this verb element in Wangaaybuwan: wangaay ‘no’, wangaaymba-li ‘refuse’; ngaawaa ‘yes’, ngaawaamba-li ‘agree’.

GY could decide to use maabuba-li ‘number.say’ for ‘count’, making the following GY sentences possible.

Maabubaldanha ngaya barrigagu Gamilaraaydha.

I can count to 100 in Gamilaraay.

For further discussion.

Teachers. The number bulaarr ‘2’ can be challenging to pronounce. It is easy for ‘aa’ to be shortened, and also for ‘rr’ to be left off. If ‘rr’ is difficult a ‘d’ is gaba.

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