longren:
>>Indo-European borrowed numerals from Semitic? How do you explain
>>Japanes "siti" for 7?
>
>That's not a native Japanese number ("7" is <nana>). It's from
>Chinese (Mod. Mand. qi1, OChin. *shit).
Yes, *shit is found everywhere... Actually, the Chinese origin of the
ichi-ni-san set of numerals is better seen through the Cantonese language
since Mandarin has strayed alot from the ancient pronunciation. Here's the
whole deal:
Mandarin Cantonese Japanese
1 yi(-) yat(\) ichi
2 er(\) yi(_) ni
3 san(-) saam(\) san
4 shi(\) sei(_) shi (also native /yon/)
5 wu(//) ng(//) go
6 liu(/) lok(/) roku
7 qi(-) chat(\) shichi
8 ba(-) baat(\) hachi (from *pachi)
9 jiu(//) gao(/) kyuu
10 shi(/) sap(/) juu
Tones are given in parentheses:
- high tone (Pinyin Mandarin "1")
_ low tone
/ rising tone (mid-to-high; Pinyin Mand. "2")
// rising tone (low-to-mid; Pinyin Mand. "3")
\ falling tone (Pinyin Mandarin "4")
As for the other set of Japanese numerals, they are certainly native, based
on a binary opposition scheme using vowel harmony (eg: OJap fitotu/futatu,
mitu/mutu, yotu/yatu, etc). Here they are in Old Japanese, afair:
1 fitotu
2 futatu
3 mitu
4 y�tu
5 itutu
6 mutu
7 nanatu
8 yatu
9 k�k�n�tu
10 t�w�-
Espero que he ayudado, se�or/se�ora/se�orita/objeto inanimado.
- gLeN
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