Measure words
Classifiers
When indicating the quantity of an inanimate noun, they are required to have measure words. This is required whether the number is specific — "a stone", "six bricks" — or nonspecific — "some houses", "many trees", and even if the number indicated is "one". The only inanimate nouns exempt from the measure word requirements are proper nouns (which includes names of the month and days of the week), currencies (e.g. "five dollars"), and measure words themselves (including units such as "kilogram" or "meter"). Animate or sentient nouns sometimes use measure words as well; inanimate nouns always do.
| Size and shape | ||
|---|---|---|
| Word | Gloss | Use |
| ike | GRAIN | grain (of rice, sand, etc.); drop of liquid |
| eno | BEAD | bead, pebble (bigger than a grain) |
| aung | COIN | objects bigger than pebbles but small enough to hold multiple in one hand; prototypically round and flat like a coin, but also used for many other similar objects (e.g. bottle cap, flash drive, piece of bowtie pasta) |
| sīte | SHEET | flat, thin object (paper, blanket, etc.; but not window or mirror) |
| tone | BALL | globe, ball, sphere (does not have to be perfectly spherical; for example, an egg or a pineapple) |
| 'ang | HAIR | hair, string, filament, cable, noodle (long and very thin) |
| punga | SPEAR | long and thin, but not nearly so thin as a string (e.g. ruler, three-hole-punch, spear, pole, road, pencil) |
| Foods | ||
| ouma | LOAF | loaf, roast, cake, etc. (a food that is cooked or otherwise prepared in one mass, usually but not necessarily with the intention of subdividing it before serving) |
| tīka | SLICE | slice or portion of food (specifically referring to a portion of something that, before being portioned out, would be classified with loaf/roast) |
| tereng | FRUIT | piece of food that can be held in the hand and eaten (originally used for fruits and vegetables; extended to other foods like sandwiches, burgers, ice cream cones; only refers to "ready-to-eat" foods that are generally hand-sized; unprepared foods use some other classifier, and foods that are different sizes use more appropriate classifiers [e.g. roast/loaf, or bead/pebble for small pieces of candy or popcorn or whatever]) |
| Specific objects or functions | ||
| ōki | CLOTHING | article of clothing (including shoes, glasses, etc.) or anything else affixed to the body (hair clip, bandage, nametag, etc.); also used for objects that typically get affixed to other objects (postage stamps, picture on a wall, wall mirror) |
| pewa | HOUSE | house, building, church, school (refers specifically to the *building*, not the *institution* of a school/church/whatever, which would be sentient) |
| meika | PLANT | plant, tree (referring to the whole thing and specifically when it is still in the ground) |
| toya | CROP | plant, tree (separate form, referring to when it has been cut or harvested) |
| rū'u | BLADE | blade, knife, sharp thing (not used for "blade of grass", which would be PLANT or CROP depending on whether it has been cut) |
| miule | FURNITURE | piece of furniture |
| īma | TOOL | hand tools, cutlery, handheld musical instruments (violins, guitars, trumpets, but not pianos or drumsets, which get classified as furniture) |
| oiwa | FLOOR | floor/story, patio, sidewalk, walkway, plaza, (individual) stairs (but not road/street); can refer to a naturally occurring flat slab of stone but otherwise not used for natural features |
| keina | GLASS | glass (used for many, but not all, objects made of glass, particularly windows, mirrors, bottles, and cups) |
| āu | PLACE | geographical units (cities, provinces, countries, city blocks, etc.; also used for real estate, properties, land holdings, etc.; this is used for societally created and recognized geographical concepts, not natural geographic features) |
| ram | MOUNTAIN | hill, mountain, volcano; also used for large, immovable objects such as statues (including objects that might normally use another classifier, if the speaker wishes to emphasize their immovability); stairways |
| ūso | MEADOW | used for fields, meadows, valleys, beaches, islands; units of land not classifiable under MOUNTAIN or PLACE |
| kā | CONTAINER | container (used when counting e.g. bags, boxes, envelopes; food containers are classified as DISH) |
| wā | DISH | plates, cups, dishes, pots, pans (objects that contain food or in which it is served or prepared; objects that manipulate food, such as cutlery or cooking utensils, are classified as hand tools) |
| koi | SHARD | a (broken) piece of something (that isn't "supposed" to break into pieces; e.g. a shard of glass, a piece of driftwood) |
| ngata | PIECE | a piece of something (other than food) that *is* supposed to be issued in pieces broken from a whole (e.g. a piece of tape; but it does not refer to something that has been pre-broken or pre-divided; so a piece of paper wouldn't use this classifier, unless it's torn from a roll) |
| omong | MACHINE | machine or device (that doesn't move and thus isn't classified as animate; e.g. a telephone, a TV set, computer) |
| Verbs, actions, abstract concepts | ||
| āmin | INSTANCE | instance of something (used for a lot of abstract nouns, e.g. "today at work was filled with a thousand frustrations") |
| āike | STRIKE | actions done with the body (bow, kick, punch, blink, step; but not anything that involves something coming out of the body, like spitting or shitting or breathing) |
| kanau | EXPULSION | act of expelling something or being expelled from the body, from an object, or from a location (taking a shit; exhaling; departures from an airport) |
| leun | INTAKE | act of entering something/somewhere (entering a building, swallowing something, an injection, etc.) |
| kam | BURST | a quick, sudden action or noise |
| ākai | ACTION | a long, sustained action or event |
| Other | ||
| tokamō | UNIT | unit (deliberately generic, used when indicating an object whose nature is unknown, or when referring to multiple objects that would each use different measure words [but that would not be properly classified as a SET; see below]); frequently used in retail and inventory control or in legal writing; but also the standard measure word for things that don't easily fit into other measure categories (such as e.g. "lip") or for which the speaker doesn't know or remember the measure word; often used casually, similar to English "get me a thing of beer" etc.; taught to foreign language speakers as a "fall-back" measure word if they don't know the correct one |
| lolo | DOLLOP | dollop, glob (a single contiguous portion of some spreadable substance like peanut butter or mud that isn't liquid enough to be considered animate) |
| mung | DOUGH | piece of something malleable, like dough (refers to a thicker substance, and usually but not necessarily a bigger portion, than "dollop") |
| īa | SET | a set of different but related items (e.g. a suit of clothes, a meal with entree and sides, a packed schoolbag, etc.; unless explicitly indicated otherwise, indicates a *complete* set) |
| ong | POSITION | positions, places (e.g. seats in a theater, number of seats at a table, positions in line, available job positions in an organization, a slot in something) |
| kaita | PAIR | a pair of something (not just two but A PAIR; but not things like scissors, pants, glasses which English calls pairs even though they're individual objects) |
| ō | TYPE | type, kind, variety |
| skon | LIMB | a limb or other anatomical extremity (including head, arm, hand, foot, leg, finger, toe, penis, tail, nose, breast, ear); also used for unusual growths on a body, or for protrusions or other items sticking out (typically perpendicular) from an object that is otherwise flat, round, solid, etc. |
| ūin | HOLE | a hole, recess, crack, cave, divot, orifice (including bodily orifices such as the mouth, the nostril, the anus, the vagina; caves, pits, ditches; a hole in the wall, a pothole, a grave); a volcano would be [MOUNTAIN] but its crater would be [HOLE] |
| wong | HEAD | used in some contexts when counting animals or people; used especially (with animals) when taking stock of the number owned or in business transactions, or with giving headcounts of e.g. an army, a public rally, etc.; finds frequent use in describing members of "the enemy" such as during wartime; used for counting corpses and carcasses (human or animal); also used for statues of people or animals, dolls, stuffed animals, etc. |
- Any container (cup, box, plate, barrell, room, etc.) can be used to indicate "a [container]'s worth of [something]"
- Specific units of measurement also act as measure words; see below
Units of measurement
The Lorradine Islands officially use SI measurements. While the descendants of the English colonists continue to informally use British measurements, Ka'ekala natives use traditional Ka'ekala measurements. Historically, of course, these were not set in stone, and their exact measures necessarily varied from person to person; today, they are standardized to measurements.
SI units
| English | Ka'ekala |
|---|---|
| exa- | esa- |
| peta- | peta- |
| tera- | tera- |
| giga- | kika- |
| mega- | meka- |
| kilo- | kilo- |
| hecto- | 'eto- |
| deca- | teka- |
| deci- | tesi- |
| centi- | seti- |
| milli- | mili- |
| micro- | mikaro- |
| nano- | nano- |
| pico- | piko- |
| femto- | pemato- |
| atto- | ato- |
| English | Ka'ekala |
|---|---|
| gram | karam |
| meter | mīta |
| second | seken |
| ampere | amapīa |
Additional units:
- hectare: 'ekatēa
- liter: līta
| Name | Modern definition | Traditional definition |
|---|---|---|
| um | 2 cm (0.79 in) | width of a finger |
| elāng | 20 cm (7.87 in) | length of a hand (wrist to fingertip) |
| nokē | 50 cm (19.69 in) | length of a forearm (elbow to fingertip) |
| oleme | 2 m (6 ft 6.74 in) | armspan (fingertip to fingertip) |
| palān | 30 km (18.64 mi) | distance a person could walk in a day |
| snuwa | distance a boat could sail in half a day (and still be able to return by the end of the day |
The units palān and snuwa were once different lengths, but today they are the same distance. The former is used for distances on land, and the latter is used on the sea (distance by air depends on whether the aircraft is flying over land or over sea).