As mentioned in earlier work, the first twenty-five numeral words of Moundsbar are taboo. Oddly, although these words are not used, everyone seems to know what they are, except, unfortunately, us. The fact that words similar to them in sound are also avoided explains one heck of a lot of the problems we have had working on this language.

There is, as one might have known, a compensatory, somewhat massive, system of number marking on the noun, from dual to vigintiquinqual:

/mi/		‘juju bean’
/su/		‘two juju beans’
...
/pa/		‘twenty-five juju beans’

While Moundsbar morphemes are often quite short (e.g., /-p-/ ‘old toothless tentmaker’), nonetheless the above examples do not analyze. Despite the ample morphological resources made available to the world’s languages by the human mind’s rich stock of universal categories and parameter settings, Moundsbar, with nearly unfathomable perversity, has chosen suppletion as its chief means of number marking, with the result that well over 65% of the nominal vocabulary of the language is unfamiliar to the average speaker.

Since Moundsbarians have as much need to count as anyone, and more now that they are experimenting with off-track betting as a strategy for economic development, there are several standard evasive manoeuvers that everyone accepts, such as indicating body parts, carrying about a supply of pebbles, or carrying about a supply of body parts. Some individuals make up their own words, but then of course no one understands them.

Many people have asked us how the numeral words might have become taboo. The original Moundsbarian religion, Mism, practiced by the primitive Mists, posited two opposing cosmic forces, Even and Odd, and held that by the end of the world, Even would win. We think the Misthood became convinced that if counting had to begin at twenty-six, the evens would be way ahead, encouraging, one might say, the eschaton.

Of course the Moundsbarians have some damn fool explanation of their own and say they never heard of Mism.

We do not anticipate a lexicon in the near future.

	Language and Psilofotismology—Tel Monks
	Extract from an Interview with Eglantine Lady Fantod, Dowager Professor of Philology at Cambridge University—Freya Shipley
	SpecGram Vol CLIII, No 3 Contents