Rereading Wee Free Men, it occurred to me to look up this phrase, and I wasn't disappointed. For all his incredible creativity, Pratchett put a lot of things in his books that he didn't invent. This is the real shepherd's counting system, and jigget really does mean twenty.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_tan_tethera
In English, we have common words as number replacements e.g. dozen for 12, score for 20, gross for 144.
But we don't use Bumfit for 15 or Jigget for 20.
What leads us to use certain terms in English language to use these words to replace numbers and why discard other methods of counting?
while reading a terry pratchett book i was reminded of Yan Tan Tethera. it's a counting rhyme that was used by shepherds for counting sheep & knitters for counting stitches. there's a lot about it that feels very "toki pona" to me; partially it's the old and culturally-common use-cases of it, weaving, & keeping count of those relying on you, and partially its the concept of, rather than using "normal" numbers, using a rhyming poem with 20 words to keep track of things in scores.
Yan Tan Tethera seems to use words that are derrived from numbers, but toki pona doesnt have a "proper" number system, so i went for something that was in the spirit of Yan Tan Tethera, but not a 1:1 translation of the idea. i deliberately aimed for something that is, like Yan Tan, a little nonsensical and abstract (and certainly non-grammatical), while still keeping a glimmer of meaning (& maybe giving those knitters something to ponder)
here's what i settled on; i like how the run-on-words create ambiguity and it's not always clear where one semantic piece ends and another starts, and, i'm pretty pleased with how nice it sounds (to my ears at least) when read aloud.
jan pan kute mute mi,
telo selo kala ala ni,
sike ike kama sama a!
poki toki waso taso ma
It only mentions England, but also says it's a Celtic form of counting, so I was wondering :)
Found this in r/discworld
