From: morten.thoresen@...
Message: 10618
Date: 2001-10-25
> Hi Morten,Hei Anders!
> --- 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