----- Original Message
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Sent: Friday, April
05, 2002 12:58 PM
Subject: [tied] Re:
The Dravidian Salesman
> Older Germanic languages had a "small
hundred" (100) and a "large hurdred" (120). With that kind of sloppy
terminology, no wonder they borrowed a more exact hundred from the
Iranic-speakers (astronomers, methematicians and all that).
Three
objections: -- (1) The Sarmatians are not reputed to have been great
mathematicians or astronomers. -- (2) All the other old Germanic languages had
the same decimal/duodecimal hundred problem but none of them solved it by
borrowing. The terminology was not all that sloppy, anywise, since when
precision was required they resorted to composite numerals, as in Old
English:
70 hund-seofontig
80 hund-eahtatig
90 hund-nigontig
100 hund-te:ontig (= hund, Goth. taíhuntêhund/taíhuntaíhund)
110 hund-ændlæftig
120 hund-twelftig
-- (3) The 'thousand' word was not
ambiguous, and yet it too was replaced.
Piotr