Summary

The vast majority of the three hundred or so modern Tibeto-Burman languages have decimal numeral systems, like most contemporary languages, and more specifically like their large influential neighbours, the Sinitic and Indo-Aryan languages. Like most languages again, their favourite way of constructing higher numbers is by multiplication and addition.

On inquiry, some of them reveal less common bases – 20, 12, 5 and even 4 – as the building blocks of their number systems. These may be used in parallel with a decimal system, may be mixed into it, or may be the unique system of the language. Some are only traces and some are full-fledged systems, like Dzongkha, which can compute all numbers up to 160,000 (204) including all intermediate numbers in its vigesimal system. Only the Maya language of Central America has been described with a comparable complexity.

Principles of number-building other than addition and multiplication, like fractions inside a number, or overcounting, which have become rare in other parts of the world, are also attested, although not always recognised by descriptors.

A complete typology of number systems has much to learn from Tibeto- Burman languages. More field-research is urgently needed to collect these fast-disappearing systems, which foreign educators and local speakers alike unfortunately regard as a hindrance to socio-economic development.

On the Endangerment of Number Systems

Many Tibeto-Burman languages are, as we know, endangered. Some are more imminently threatened with extinction, due to the very small number of their speakers, or to socio-economic conditions which discourage their speakers from continuing to use them.