Talk:Welsh numerals

Suggested move: Counting system of the Welsh language → Welsh numerals
In line with other articles on the numerals of various languages. See Category:Numerals. FilipeS 18:09, 20 October 2007 (UTC) Thank you. It seemed to be a fairly uncontroversial move, so I decided to be bold, and went ahead with it. FilipeS 01:02, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. —Angr 18:23, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

biliwn
I have removed the following statement, as it is unsourced, and a quick attempt to verify it seemed to contradict it.


 * The number miliwn is feminine, and biliwn is masculine. It is necessary for the gender of these to be different as they can both mutate to filiwn.  Two million is therefore dwy filiwn, and two billion is dau filiwn.

From what I can see from the limited web search results for dau filiwn that are not mirrors of this page, the intended meaning seems in each case to have been "two million". There is also a source that suggests that biliwn never mutates (presumably for exactly this reason) - see, and I see usage examples online for dau biliwn and a few for dwy biliwn. So it seems that although the two words do in principle differ in gender, people don't always get the gender correct, but rather the actual way of avoiding ambiguity is not mutating biliwn. &mdash; Alan✉ 09:24, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

According to Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru miliwn is always feminine but biliwn can be either masculine or feminine. GPC is pretty much the authority on these things so go with what it says. Also a paper by Ball (2015) (the author of Cambridge-published books like The Celtic Languages) states that miliwn and biliwn are problematic for other reasons (like the actual value of a billion). He concludes that mutation of both miliwn and biliwn is avoided in newspapers and TV reports though there is no actual rule for it, it's just one of those things which isn't and will likely never be set in stone. – Dyolf87 (talk) 10:58, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Origin of "decimal" system
Some information on the origin of the decimal system of counting would be useful. Did it evolve in the normal way, or was is it a sudden "artificial" introduction? Esperanto (125 years old) has a very similar way of counting (tri dek naŭ as opposed to tri deg naw). In the absence of more concrete information it cannot be ruled out that Zamenhof, a polyglot and the creator of Esperanto, might have "lifted" this feature of his language from Welsh - or possibly Spanish, given the popularity of this system in Patagonian Welsh.

Clarification of this, backed up of course by good references, would add considerable value to this article. 87.114.100.5 (talk) 00:25, 13 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Now done; it originated in 19th-century Patagonia. Alansplodge (talk) 18:16, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Re-write
I am currently in the process of re-writing this article because, as it stands, it's very scarce and short on useful, encyclopaedic information. When I am finished and satisfied that it is suitable for publication I shall just edit the article and shall not be looking for consensus on the matter as I doubt expanding this article and making it more useful should be challenged. – Dyolf87 (talk) 10:54, 22 November 2022 (UTC)