The following extracts from "Ulster-Scots: A Grammar of the Traditional Written and Spoken Language" by Philip Robinson (Published for The Ulster-Scots Language Society by The Ullans Press, 1997), are provided by permission of Philip Robinson and The Ulster-Scots Language Society. Copyright: Philip Robinson, 1997. All rights reserved. No part of these extracts may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Ulster-Scots Language Society.

2.7 Numbers (Nummers)

0 nocht/awt
1 yin/ane/ae
2 twa/qwa
3 thrie/thie*
4 fower/fivver*
5 five
6 sax
7 sen/seiven*
8 echt
9 nine
10 ten
11 leivin*/livin/elivin
12 twal/qwal
13 thirtaen*/thurteen
14 fowertaen*/-teen, etc
15 fiftaen
16 saxtaen
17 sentaen/seiventaen
18 echtaen
19 ninetaen
20 twonnie/qwonnie
21 yin an twonnie/twontie-yin/twuntie-wan
22 twa an twontie/twontie-twa
30 thretie/thurtie
31 yin an thurtie/thurtie-yin
40 fawrtie
50 fiftie
60 saxtie
70 seiventie
80 echtie
90 ninetie
100 yin hunnèr
132 yin hunnèr an thurtie-twa
200 twa hunnèr
232 twa hunnèr an thurtie-twa
1000 yin thoosan
1032 yin thoosan an thurtie-twa
1232 twal hunnèr an thurtie-twa
2000 twa thoosan
2032 twa thoosan an thurtie-twa

A numeral used to identify the year (eg 1862) is also spoken as echtaen an saxtie-twa. Sometimes this is written as 18&62 or even 18 an 62, for example, at the start of ‘fiction’ letters written in Ulster-Scots to local newspapers at the end of the last century. Some of the numeral forms identified above are archaic, but found in the works of the weaver poets, eg “This threty year, I’m sure, and three”, “For sic a breach this threty year”, “These threty year gang whar I may”, “This se’nteen owks I have not play’d”, “For threty shillin”.

Note: Numerals ending in –taen* are pronounced as the spelling here indicates, eg [sax-tain] but only locally, and not in the core Ulster-Scots speaking areas. However, the word teens, by itself, is pronounced as spelt; eg Hè fell intae teens o thoosans (‘He inherited “teens” of thousands’). Note also that teens is used in Ulster-Scots in a way in which ‘tens’ or ‘dozens’ might be used in English.

ZERO (nocht). The numeral ‘zero’ or ‘nought’. Unlike the other numerals, nocht is rarely used except when referring specifically to the number 0. For example, although A hae twa schilling yit (I still have two shillings) can be a valid use of the numeral twa in speech, it is not so with the number 0 or nocht: (*A hae nocht schilling yit). Here we would say A hinnae ocht left or A hae naethin (or nane) left. When counting, the numeral ‘nought’ is awt, or naethin. Nocht is, however, used to mean ‘nothing’, eg Savage-Armstrong: “An’ think o’ nocht but her, sae sweet”.

ONE (yin). In Mid-Ulster, ‘one’ is pronounced wan and is so written by dialect writers. The pronunciation (and spelling) of ‘one’ as yin is shared between east Ulster and South-West Scotland, although in Older Scots it was always written as ane. In Ulster-Scots it is common to add the definite article ‘the’ before the numeral in speech – eg Ye cudnae be feart o jist yin o thaim (see section 3.1). The abbreviated form of ane – a’e or ae- is also used for ‘one’, but is an obsolete adjectival form, and means ‘a single-‘or  ‘one (in particular)-‘. [Note: The indefinite article ‘a’ or ‘an’ in English was also written in Older Scots as ane (see section 3.2)]

‘One’ is the only numeral which has two different forms- depending on whether the usage is as a noun (ane or yin), or as an adjective (ae or yae):

Dae ye no ken mair nor yae wee lass?
Na, A jist ken thà yin.
Cud ye no gie iz tha ae tùrn?
A gien ye yin last nicht.

As with Burns’s songs “Ae fond kiss”, and “Let me in this ae nicht”, ae or yae often has a sense of ‘one in particular, and indeed can mean ‘one and only’ – ma yae wee wean, or A’m Tam M’Kee’s ae ae sinn. Other (mostly archaic) uses of yae include:

(a) the same
The’re aa tha yae breed (also, and currently, tha yin breed).
(b) the very
She’s tha yae warst wumman.
(c) about, nearly
A’m eftèr ae ten ton.

The Ulster-Scots poets rarely wrote ‘one’ as yin, but used the conventional Scots form ane. Similarly, they rarely wrote yae for ae:

“To town ae morn as Lizie hie’d” (Thomson)
“ Ae day a wan’ring fiddler, lame” (Thomson)
“ Sae a’weel pleas’d, wi ae consent” (Thomson)
“ That’s ae thing in which I am blest” (Thomson)
“ What I hae cost for ae bawbee” (Thomson)
“ Just ae word ere I gang awa” (Thomson)
“ Ae Monday morn” (Huddleston)
“ Gif thou’d withdraw for ae camping” (Orr)
“ The hedge-hauntin’ blackbird, on ae fit whyles restin” (Orr)
“ We’se gie them something; ae babee” (Orr)
“ Tho’ whyles scarce worth ae bare babee” (Orr)
“ Ae windy Day last owk” (Starrat)
“ To see no yae stane on anither” (Bleakley)

Other ‘literary’ uses of ae in compounds include the following: An ae-yockit egg is a ‘one-yolked egg’, and ae-haunit can mean ‘single-handed’ in the sense of clumsy or ‘by oneself’. An ae-horse peu is a ‘one-horse plough’, and aefauld ('one-fold') is used to mean ‘sincere’ – an aefauld lad is aye tha yin wye (‘always the one way’ is an idiom used to describe someone who is ‘pleasant, trustworthy and sincere’).

TWO, THREE (twa/qwa/thie*). The qwa (and qwal, qwonnie, qwarthie) forms for twa etc are rare forms still used in parts of County Antrim. Particularly around Belfast, the letter ‘r’ is dropped after ‘th’ in words like ‘throw’, ‘through’, ‘throttle’ and ‘three’ – which become thow*, thoo*, thottle* and thie*. This feature is similar to the way in which frae becomes fae (and even ‘from’ becomes fom*) – see above (section 1.5).

‘Several’, ‘two or three’ or ‘ a couple’ is tworthy, twa-thrie, qwarthie, etc.

FOUR (fower, fivver*). Although the letters ‘v’, ‘u’ and ‘w’ are often interchangeable in Scots and Ulster-Scots, more often it is ‘w’ that is substituted for ‘v’ (eg owre for ‘over’). The unusual fivver form of the Ulster-Scots fower (‘four’) is known to the author only in the Ards area of Co Down. Otherwise it is apparently unknown in Scots or elsewhere in Ulster.

SEVEN (sen, seiven). The shorter form of the Ulster-Scots ‘seven’ (sen, or sein) is an archaism which was generally used only in compound words – sennicht (‘seven nights’, i.e. a ‘week’), sennaker (‘seven acres’, as in place-names), sentaen* (‘seven-teen’), etc.

EIGHT (echt). The distinctive –cht pronunciation of this number is one of the acknowledged ‘markers’ of Ulster-Scots speech.

ELEVEN (leivin). The initial vowel sound is sometimes lost in a number of words such as ‘eleven’ in Ulster-Scots (see section 1.4).

TWELVE (twal, qwal). A ‘dozen’ is used frequently for the number 12, in the form dizzen.

Ordinal numbers. The ‘ordinal numbers’ which define the position of an object in a series; ‘first’, ‘second’, ‘third’ etc are furst/farss, seconn and thurd in Ulster-Scots. All higher ordinal numbers end in ‘-th’ in English, and in –tht in Ulster-Scots:

fourth	-	fowertht
eight	-	echt
twelfth	-	twaltht/twalt
eleventh	-	leiventht/livintht
sixteenth	-	saxtaentht
twentieth	-	twonnietht
hundredth	-	hunnertht

The abbreviation for these ordinals, for example in giving dates such as the ‘4^th November 1995’, is –t: 4t Novemmer 19&95.

Note: The ‘length’, ‘breadth’, and ‘depth’ of anything is the lenth(t), brenth(t) and the depth(t).

‘How long is the sixtieth path?’- Quhit lentht wud thà saxtietht pad be?
‘No more than two miles long’ – Nae mair nor twa mile lang.

Adverb numbers. ‘Once’ is yince or yinst, and ‘twice’ is twice or twyst (pronounced [twiced] and not *[twist]). ‘Thrice’ or ‘three times’, ‘four times’, etc are: thrie tims, fower tims, etc.

A heerd tell on tha leiventht nicht he wuz hame tha
yinst or twyst jist, bot he sez he wuz sax times hame theyeir.

‘I heard on the night of the eleventh that he has only been home once or twice, but he said that he has been home six times this year’.