Days are reckoned by the number of sleeps they have had, and the biggest measurement of time goes by so many moons.
When he comes to computing numbers, his fingers are of the greatest service to him, and at times his toes as well. An aboriginal is not a mathematician, and his vocabulary does not contain running series of numerals. The usual method of counting low figures is after the following pattern of the King Sound natives:
- “arra” (one).
- “kwiarra” (two).
- “kwiarra arra” (three).
- “kwiarra kwiarra” (four).
Beyond four, counting either goes by “hands” or “feet,” or for ordinary purposes there are two comprehensive words in use which signify a “small-large number” and a “large-small number.” In some cases, such as the Aluridja, “one” (“goitarada”) appears as the diminutive form of “two” (“goitara”). In the same sense, a shorter distance is expressed by the Wongapitcha as the diminutive of a great distance by qualifying the word “wurnma,” meaning “far,” by affixing “wimuggitta,” which means “young.” Hence “wimuggitta wurnma” reads the “young (one) of far,” i.e. “close up.” This is really the same way of expressing a fraction of space as the same tribe has adopted for expressing minority in age; a youth or young man is known as “wimuggitta wardi,” the second word “wardi” standing for an adult man.
PLATE LIV
1. Making “vegetable down” by pounding grass between two stones. Humbert River, Northern Territory.
2. Worora native making a stone spear-head, Northern Kimberleys, Western Australia.
The Dieri of the Lake Eyre region have one of the most elaborate systems of numeration, which includes, at any rate, an expression for every number up to eleven.
- “kulno,” one.
- “mandru,” two.
- “parkulu” or “parkulintja,” three.
- “mandru mandru,” four.
- “mandru ja parkulintja,” five.
- or “marra warra kulno,” five, i.e. hand part one (one hand).
- “marra pirri kulno,” six.
- “marra pirri mandru,” seven.
- “marra pirri parkulintja,” eight.
- “marra pirri mandru mandru,” nine.
- “marra warra mandru” ten, i.e. hand parts two (two hands).
- “tjinna pirri kulno,” eleven.
- “marrapu,” many.
- “mörla marrapu,” very many.