--- In phoNet@y..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@i...> wrote:
> Old Indo-Aryan (and common Iranian) nava and their Modern Indic and
Iranian reflexes (including Pashto n&h) are regular developments of
PIE *newn. (ending with a syllabic nasal, vocalised in Indo-Iranian).
Santali lo is simply unrelated.

Try saying the dental 'n' i.e. pronounced with the tongue against the
back of the upper front teeth (dental); it sounds like an 'l' when
the nose is not involved. Could this explain the nasals in Lahn.da
and Punjabi no_~ also meaning 'nine'. We don't know much about the
etymology of 'lo' in Santali to say if it is unrelated to IE; do we?