Unit 04: Numbers; Talking about Rabbits(1)

According to the number that ye shall prepare, so shall ye do to every one according to their number.
(Numbers, 15:12)

As we all know, rabbits can count up to four, any higher number being "many", or as it is generally translated into English, "thousand". Here are the Lapine numbers, both cardinal and ordinal:

[LISTEN]
eth, ethile - one, first
si, sithile - two, second
des, desthile - three, third
kes, kesthile - four, fourth
hrair, hraithile - thousand, thousandth
kimthile - last

Notes
a) There is no word for "zero" - you can use nahl ("no") instead.
b) Note that "thousandth" is hraithile, not hrairthile.
c) There's that sth combination again! (See Unit 03.)
d) Be careful with kimthile - it means "last" only in the sense of "final", not in the sense of "most recent". For example, "a fox ate the last doe" is Homba laynt flay u marli kimthile, but "last week, a fox ate the doe" is u marlao, homba laynt flay u marli.
e) Ordinals, like most adjectives, follow the noun (unless extra emphasis is needed) - u aydir ethile, "the first pike"; u ethile aydir!, "the first pike!".

Now then, time for some really useful vocab - about rabbits! One or two words in this list you'll already have met, but I'm putting them all in the same list for simplicity:

naylte - rabbit (in general)
tarli - buck
marli - doe
rooli - kitten
nos - big
roo - small
mar - long, tall
tar - fat, wide
noroo - middle-sized

Notes
a) Rooli is almost exclusively applied to rabbit kittens - a cat kitten is simply pfeffa roo ("a little cat").
b) Remember that oo is pronounced as in English "crow", not as in "moo".
c) The literal meanings of marli, tarli and rooli are "tall-head", "fat-head" and "small-head" respectively - does generally do have longer faces than bucks.
d) The usual word for "big" is nos - the word rah is restricted to a few special circumstances where great respect is intended.
e) If you need to specify a kitten's sex, use rooli marli or rooli tarli.
f) Rooli Roo, "Little Kitten" is the star of a series of very simple stories used for teaching kittens Lapine. The phrase rooli roo can also be used affectionately, very roughly in the manner of "baby" in English.

Hey presto - sample sentences are back! There are only a few more words you need to know for these - koi means "to have" (as in "to possess"), hray is the very common verb "to run", los is "water" and hahean means "enough" (it goes before the word it qualifies, whether noun or verb). Also note that that versatile word flay can mean "drink" as well as "eat" or "feed":

Lapine - English

[LISTEN] U hyao, u tarlil zayn flay u flayrah ethile - Tomorrow, the bucks will eat the first flayrah
[LISTEN] Thlayli laynt u naylte kimthile flay u los - Bigwig was the last rabbit to drink the water
[LISTEN] U roolil roo lay koi hahean flay? - Do the little kittens have enough food?
[LISTEN] Hray, u hraithile! - Run, for the thousandth time!

Note that the last sentence translates literally as "run, the thousandth!" - this is quite sufficient to convey the required idea. Also note the similarity between hrair and hray - this is completely coincidental, but it makes it a good idea to pronounce the "r" at the end of hrair if there is likely to be any possible confusion. I think that's enough for now - next time around I'll have a bit of a surprise for you!