Mandarin

Mandarin handles numbers in a nice regular way, as do most other Chinese languages. for numbers between ten and a hundred, you just say the amount of tens (unless it's only one ten), the word for ten (拾), and then how much more than ten it is (unless it's exactly a multiple of ten). this system is easily extendable into something sixier:

  • 0: 零 (líng)

  • 1: 一 (yī)

  • 2: 二 (èr)

  • 3: 三 (sān)

  • 4: 四 (sì)

  • 5: 五 (wǔ)

  • 10: 六 (liù)

  • 11: 六一 (liùyī)

  • 12: 六二 (liùèr)

  • 13: 六三 (liùsān)

  • 14: 六四 (liùsì)

  • 15: 六五 (liùwǔ)

  • 20: 二六 (èrliù)

  • 30: 三六 (sānliù)

  • 40: 四六 (sìliù)

  • 50: 五六 (wǔliù)

for 100, we run into a problem. Chinese numerals use a really cool myriad system for powers of ten, and the Mandarin words for them aren't derived from anything; they're just unique words. in order to have seximal in Mandarin work the same way decimal works in Mandarin, we'd need to make completely new words for nif and the powers of unexian. how? beats me.

so instead of trying to do that, I’m just going to loan the English terms like I did for everything else. the problem with this is that loanwords into Chinese languages are like, really hard to do, due to the way the Han logography works. that said, here’s my go at it.

nif is loaned into Mandarin as 尼 (ní), which is the way /ni/ is usually loaned in Mandarin, as in the Mandarin name for Venice, 威尼斯 (Wēinísī).

  • 100: 尼 (ní)

  • 200: 二尼 (èrní)

  • 300: 三尼 (sānní)

  • 1000: 六尼 (liùní)

  • 1100: 六一尼 (liùyīní)

for the -exians, we’ll use 秈 (xiān), and the heavenly stems for the prefix roots.

  • unexian: 秈 (xiān)

  • biexian: 乙秈 (yǐxiān)

  • triexian: 丙秈 (bǐngxiān)

  • quadexian: 丁秈 (dīngxiān)

  • pentexian: 戊秈 (wùxiān)

  • unnilexian: 甲無秈 (jiǎmóxiān)

theoretically, this system could be directly adapted to work for all languages that use Chinese numerals.