Re: Albanian seems odd



-Colin Fine'in mesaji: > Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
> > On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 13:44:47 GMT, Joe Fineman
> > <joe_f@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>"Juuitchan" <juuitchan@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> >>
> >>
> >>>The numbers 1 through 5 are: një, dy, tre, katër, pesë. Sounds like
> >>>normal Indo-European numbers, right? Number 6 is
> >>>"gjashtë"... "Gjashtë"??!! Where did that come from?!
> >
> >
> > /s-/ before a stressed vowel becomes gj-, /e/ in a closed
> > syllable becomes /ja/, /k^s/ > /s/ > /sh/. -të is the same
> > suffix as found in shta-të, te-të, nën-të, dhje-të (and also
> > in Slavic s^es-tI, deveN-tI, deseN-ti). It's related to the
> > ordinal suffix *-tos.
> >
> >
> >>In Russian, 8 & 9 are vosem' & d'ev'at' -- nothing like the IE roots.
> >
> >
> > Slavic osmI < *ok^t-mis, like sedmI < *sept-mis (~
> > *sebd-mis), again has a suffix related to the ordinal suffix
> > -mos.
> >
> And the prothetic v- is only in East Slavic IIRC. Cf. Polish siedem,
> osiem.
>
> > The word for "9" is anomalous in Balto-Slavic in that we
> > would have expected *neveNtis instead of *deveNtis.
> >
> Joe:
> > My suspicion is that the number words, being often chanted in counting
> > (where context is unusually powerful in fixing the meaning) are
> > particularly susceptible to playfulness. Another curiosity: the
> > alliteration of four & five (and of Latin quattuor & quinque) is not
> > in IE. Might it have been suggested by the subsequent alliteration of
> > six & seven, which is? And how did we happen on the rhyme between 7 &
> > 11? Did German once have it, and abandon it? Or was it invented in
> > Old English? I have not cheated by looking it up.
>
> 4 and 5 share an initial sound in Latin and Celtic, and in Germanic, but
> in the first two 5 has assimilated to 4, whereas in Germanic it's the
> other way round.
> IIRC 6 originally began sw-, different from 7. (cf Welsh, chwech, saith).
>
> 7 and 11 in English have no common origin, but I suppose there could be
> some sort of assimilation at play (which would account for the great
> difference between 11 and 12).
>
> There are odd patterns in numbers all over the place. In Turkish 1-5 and
> 10-50 appear to be completely heterogeneous, but 60-90 clearly share
> roots with 6-9, and the four pairs 6 & 7, 8 & 9, 60 & 70, 80 & 90 each
> shares a suffix, though there is no obvious relationship between any of
> the four suffixes.
It is true for Turkish but it is the same suffix for some Turkic
languages.
6 - altI vs 60 - altan ( < altI on = six -times- ten)
7 - yedi vs 70 - yeten ( < yedi on = seven -times- ten)
8 - sekiz vs 80 - seksen ( < sekiz on = eight -times- ten)
9 - dokuz vs 90 - doksan ( < dokuz on = nine -times- ten)

> In Japanese, 1 & 2, 3 & 6, 4 & 8 and arguably 5 & 10 each share a
> consonant.
>
> Colin
> .
> >
> > =======================
> > Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> > mcv@xxxxxx

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