Numbers

From: Morten Thoresen
Message: 10634
Date: 2001-10-26

--- In cybalist@..., malmqvist52@... wrote:
> Hi Morten,
> --- In cybalist@..., morten.thoresen@... wrote:
> > Today we have at least three spesific words in norwegian
> > for "describing" numbers also beeing numbers if I may express
> myself
> > so:
> >
> > dusin = 12 =dozen
> >
> > snes = 20
> >
> > tylft = 144 = 12 x 12 = tolv x tolv
> >
> > Snes is even today used for eggs in particular.
> >
> > Tylft I believe still is in use when talking about timber. (I'm not
> > quite sure if actually today, but in the 70-80'ies, yes.)
>
> Thanks for this I have these laftest few days gotten extemely
> interested in ancient numerical systems and especially the
> scandinavian (germanic?) ones.
>
> In Sweden he also have a <tolft>, but I haven't been able to figure
> out how many that is.
> From this
> page:http://www.humangeo.su.se/department/lhgo/Ordlista.htm#T I have:
> "tolft: äldre territorriell indelnin under hundaret. Det antas att
> tolft har något med siffran 12 att göra. Således skall en torlf betå
> av 12 bol eller besuttenhetsenheter. Ordet finns i fyra uppländska
> sockennamn exv. Husby Sjutolft."
>
> trsl:
> tolft: older territorrial partition below <hundaret>. It's assumeed
> that t. has something to do with the figure twelve. Thus would a
> <tolft> consist of 12 <bol> or property units The word exists in four
> Uplandish <socken> names e. g. Husby Sjutolft."
>
> I also found this from Norway:
> "Stort hundre 10 Tylfter eller 6 snes eller 2 skok 10 Tylvfter
> 120 Stykker",
>
> Tylvt omtales også som tylt eller tylft 12 Stykker
> and: Gross 12 Dusin 144 Stykker
> from:
> http://enit.no/org/nff/N_M_E.htm
>
>
>
> And I'm also a liitle confused now, and I'm thinking if it's not
> known in Sweden exact what toft is then maybe it's the same in
> Norway, so of course You could be right Morten.
> But do you know where I can get more information?
> I would greatly appreciate it.
>
> I'm especially interested in the unit stort hundre.
> If there is older systems in the germanic languages with other bases
> than ten I think it looks quite illogical that these from the
> beginning was mixed with each other.
>
> the figure 120 seems to me very close to 121 which is 11*11
>
> And in fact there is a swedish word here in Västergötland <elft>
> meaning eleventh,
>
> My suspicion (speculation if you wish) is that in ancient times we
> had:
>
> elft a coresp to. *stort hundra
> 11 121
>
> tolft a corresp. to gross
> 12 144
>
> Does anyome know anything more about this(or believe that there is a
> chance that it could have been like this).
>
> I also read in Gesenius article on hebrew mah that there exists
> indogermanic(sic) roots/words mah and meh for G. "gross" being
> related to <mag> which I understand is persian.
> Maybe Gesenius was too early to be an expert in hisorical
> linguistics, but I'm nonetheless interested in knowing more about
> these words.
> Do anyone here know where to start looking?
>
> Of course I know that the numbers eleven and twelve should come from
> germ. *twa(-)lifa and aina(-)lifa e. g. GHT einlif and Goth. twalif
>
> and that this according to Våre arveord the *lifa comes from the
> root *likw from the IE theme *ley-kw "leave, hand over,let be
> returned" , so that *twalifa should mean "two over (ten)"
>
> However sice I don't know so much about the semantics about *ley-kw
> more than the above I'm left wondering if it really fit.
> So far I have only lit. dvylika "twelve" to go on.
> One other question. How does the k dissappear?
>
> Best wishes
> Anders

Hej Anders!

Sorry att det här blev lite krångligt. Har kollat på webben och funnit nått
som bore interessera.

http://www.linkopp.com/members/vlaiko/dictionaries.htm

Hälsningar

Morten
Morten Thoresen
Tekstforfatter
Reklamebyrået Circus
Parkveien 62a, 0254 Oslo
23 13 13 61 fon
23 13 13 51 faks
913 54 807 mob
22 30 71 95 hjem
http://www.circus.no