Lowland Scots/Lesson03

Lesson Three: Advanced numbers, Plurals, and Interrogatives

Numbers

Here is a list of more advanced numbers; thirty¹ thirty fowerty forty fifty fifty saxty sixty seiventy seventy aichty eighty hunder hundred thoosand thousand

Ordinal, Cardinal

Numbers like "ane", "twa", and "three" are cardinal numbers, and that means that they are a generalized kind of number used to denote the size of a set. That's what you've learned so far. Ordinal numbers, however are another type of number used to accommodate infinite sequences and to classify sets with certain kinds of order structures on them. In English, Cardinal numbers would be "first", "second", and "third", though most numbers have "-th" added to them. In Scots, you generally add a "-t" to the end of the word, like so.

• Scots: seicont, fowert, fift, saxt, seivent.
• English: second, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh.

Notice how "first" and "third" weren't included in that list. That's because they are irregular like in English. In Scots, "first" is "first", or sometimes "foremaist", and "third" is "thrid" or "third".

• ¹: Also "thritty".

Plural form

Plural is when the word becomes more than one. In English, the plural form is usually "-(e)s". In Lowland Scots, nouns usually form their plural by adding "-(e)s" to the end of a word, but some irregular plurals occur. For example; "ee"/"een" ("eye"/"eyes"), "cauf"/"caur" ("calf"/"calves"), "horse"/"horse" ("horse"/"horses"), "cou"/"kye" ("cow"/"cows"), "shae"/"shuin" ("shoe"/"shoes"). Nouns of measure and quantity unchanged in the plural. Words include, "fower fit" ("four feet"), "twa mile" ("two miles"), "five pund" ("five pounds"), "three hunderwecht" ("three hundredweight"). Regular plurals include "laifs" ("loaves"), "leafs" ("leaves"), "shelfs" ("shelves") and "wifes" ("wives"), etc.

Interrogatives

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