For a fun, subtle tidbit in After Forever Falls Apart (the upcoming sequel to Graveyard of Lullabies), I added some Inupiaq (or Iñupiaq) numerals to some sections of the book. Not for the chapter numbers themselves, but…it’ll make sense once you see it.
In the meantime, here’s some fun facts about Inupiaq numerals:
- Historically, the Inupiat people have used a base-20 counting system. For most of us, we’re familiar with a base-10 system. That is, we count from 0-9, then reuse the same 10 digits to count from 10-19, then from 20-29, etc. The Inupiat system uses 20 unique digits, then reuses those to count above 20.
- Therefore, writing the number “11” in a base-20 system, represents the number twenty-one.
- This system is based on the body, particularly, using fingers and toes to count. Using fingers and/or toes to count is common in many cultures, but the Inupiaq system also ties the number 5 to “arm” (the word for 5 is “tallimat,” and the word for arm is “taliq”), and the number 20 is “iñuiññaq” refers to a whole person.
- In the 1990s, some middle school students in the city of Kaktovik in north Alaska created a system to write down this oral way of counting. This PDF here (which should open in a new tab, it’s not a download) has a nice chart on page 2 that shows all the symbols they came up with.
It’s actually a really neat system. It’s organized in groups of 5, so, “1” is 1 stroke down; “2” is a stroke down+stroke up; and “3” is a stroke down, stroke up, and another stroke down; then “5” is a horizontal stroke; while “6” is one horizontal stroke combined with 1 stroke down.
Like, even though I just recently learned about this numeral system, I find it pretty easy to figure out which numeral I’m looking at.
Here’s a wikipedia page talking more about Kaktovik numerals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaktovik_numerals
And a few more sources: https://www.dcode.fr/kaktovik-numerals
https://inupiaqonline.com//Appendix_11.pdf
That’s all for this article, I hope you enjoyed it and maybe learned something new:)
Jordyn Saelor 