Re: Nanitozo

Phil Yff wrote:
On Tue, 08 May 2007 14:03:39 GMT, Jim Breen wrote:
Both the OED and Petit Robert source "triage" to the old French verb
"trier". Robert records the first usage of trier in 1317. My French
refs don't push "trier" any further back, but I betcha it's from the
Latin for three (tres, tria, trium, tribus).

And the Latin tres came from the Ancient Greek treis.

I've heard that theory before, and I think it's absurb to suggest
that the denizens of central Italy had no word for "three" until
one was imported from nearly 1,000km away across a major slab of water.
(I hear echoes of theories that Japanese had no word for thanks until
one came from Portuguese.)

A far more plausible theory for the similarity of the words is that they
are both remnants of the Indo-European language spread that is
postulated to have happened with the spread of agriculture umpteen
millenia before the founding of Rome.

--
Jim Breen http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学
.

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