Parseltongue: And how to speak it

Chapter 13: Lesson Four/Numbers: Ine (Traditional Counting)

The traditional way for snakes to count sounds a lot like hissing. The number 1 is simply i; each time you add 1 to a number, you only need to add the syllable 'si' to the end. So 2 is isi, 3 is isisi, and so on. While this does mean that larger numbers have longer names, it also means that it's hard to distinguish between numbers larger than 4 or 5 or so in this system. In fact, the word for 'many', sisisisi, looks somewhere between the words for 4 and 5 - and can be thought of as meaning "very large - like 4 or 5 or something!"

Humans writing in Parseltongue will sometimes write ine numbers as a string of capital I's with the number of I's being the value of the number (for example: one is written as I and four is written as IIII. They are still pronounced as i and isisisi​ respectively)!

While numbers larger than 1 can be used as si-words in sentences (taking the place of Tasi or Fasi), snakes normally only use the number word i when counting (when a single thing is the subject of a sentence, we use tasi or fasi, not i!) Nevertheless, the traditional counting system is named after i; the adverbial form ine​ literally means "unary"! And "counting" itself is kaunʃe ​in Parseltongue.
one - i
two - isi
three - isisi
four - isisisi
five - isisisisi

count - kaunʃe
many - sisisisi
unary ('traditional') - ​ine

Example sentence:
​Two humans are walking.
Isi ʃen vaʃe​. (or: II ʃen vaʃe​.)