Re: IE right & 10

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:

>
> Or... there's an old word for ten, namely *kum, which later

surfaces

> as *dekm in IE with the addition of a now extinct word for "one"
> prefixed to it with cognates in Altaic, Uralic, ChukchiKamchatkan
> and Yukaghir. The plural is *kumit from whence we get the

fossilized

> suffix *-kmt- in all decads above ten.
>

This is interesting. The modern Finnish word for 10 is 'kymmenen'.
It's etymology is given as unknown in the sources I have. It is
presumed to be fairly recent in Finnish since the original FU
speakers had a base 6 number system, although the number 10 was
thought to have existed, but as *luka, with meaning of 'count'.
Some have speculated that 'kymmen' is related to 'kämmen' hand, but
the linguistic evidence is weak.

Peter P