To my mind, it always felt so saddening that adoption of a truly straightforwardly readable notation for numbers never took of. I mean it’s so easy to do. You can start for example with a single syllable per digit, and for example only target CV syllables.

From this there is many possibilities, but for example, let’s consider only a base ten. Starting with vowels order o, i, e, a, u with mnemonic o, i graphically close to 0, 1 and then cyclically continue the reverse order in alphabet (<-a, <-e, <-i, <-o*, |-u). We now only need two consonants for the two series of 5 cardinals in our base ten, let’s say k and n.

So in a quick and dirty ruby implementation that could be something like:

    $digits = %w{k n}.product(%w{o i e a u}).map{it.join('')}
    def euphonize(number) = number.to_s.split('').map{$digits[it.to_i]}.join('-')
    euphonize(1234567890) # => "ki-ke-ka-ku-no-ni-ne-na-nu-ko"

That’s just one simple example of course, there are plenty of other options in the same vein. It’s easy to create "syllabo-digit" sets for larger bases just adding more consonants, go with some CVC or even up to C₀C₁VC₀C₁ if sets for C₀ and C₁ are carefully picked.