Appendix:Wauja numerals

Usage Notes

Those Wauja elders who speak little or no Portuguese commonly use the numbers one, two, and three, but rarely any higher numbers. For numbers above three, the word okuma (many) nearly always suffices. Rarely, a greater degree of specificity is needed, such as when describing the number of enemy warriors encountered on a particular historic occasion, and how they compared to the number of Wauja defenders. In such cases, the speaker may resort to expressions referring to the number of hands and feet. In this way, paunwaun wojoku (one hand) stands for 5, two hands for 10, one foot for 15, and two feet for 20.

The Wauja know that outsiders are sometimes surprised at the economy of the Wauja counting system, and elders obligingly list numbers that are almost never heard, such as mepiaunwaunwaka (four), paunwauntaputa (six), mepiaunwauntaputa (seven), kamaukulataputa (eight), and mepiaunwaunwakataputa (nine). Young people who have studied numbers in the village schoolhouse can even provide a Wauja word for zero, aitsa ha, though no such word existed in 1983. There is only one ordinal number, kitsimai (first). Note that all numbers above 5 are variations on those first five numbers.

Although the Wauja language is very rich and complex, until recently, Wauja daily life rarely occasioned the use of numbers above five. As late as 1983, no Wauja had bank accounts or regular access to money. In those days, all the necessities of life were obtained through personal or communal labor, as well as through sharing, redistribution, trade, and gift relationships.

Today, in 2014, every Wauja household has been brought into the Brazilian cash economy to some degree. Elders now receive old-age pensions that are the right of every Brazilian citizen. Village schoolteachers and health workers receive salaries, which allows them to work every day for the community, instead of fishing and tending manioc gardens. Each Wauja village has formed community associations that manage funds from community projects, such as seed banks and sales of craft items. Young Wauja leaders must be fluent in the language and culture of Brazil in order to defend their community's lands and political interests. All these developments have suddenly created a linguistic need for using and understanding numbers in the hundreds and thousands. It will be interesting to see how the young generation of Wauja speakers handles this challenge.