From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 27030
Date: 2003-11-10
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:
> My questions here are:
> -in fact how can be explained this reduction of "patru" to "pai"?
> -why is this countig system considered a Slavic one since the Alb.
> presents the same way to count?
I think Alex's second question is, 'Why are Romanian and Albanian
believed to have borrowed the system from Slavic, rather than say
Slavic borrowing it from Getic, Albanian inheriting it from Getic,
and Romanian retaining it as a substrate?'.
I suppose it could even be a coincidence. Welsh has a similar
system (see e.g. http://www.quia.com/jg/42403list.html - _ar_
means 'on'), but with two base forms, _deg_ 'ten' and
_pymtheg_ '15'. It even has a comparable irregular form _deuddeg_
for '12'. For good measure, it also has _deunaw_ '18',
literally 'twice nine'.
Richard.