Morten:
> The Etruscan Liber Linteus site
>
> http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Thebes/5181/etrusk/default.html
>
> says the following about Etruscan numerals:
> [...] We therefore know the first six numbers:
> thu, zal, ci, a, mach, huth
I'm aware. I don't agree and the evidence isn't as convincing as it
at first seems.
As with anything else with Etruscan, 'we therefore know' is more like
'we suspect strongly but still don't have a clear indication'. The only
thing suggesting that /s'a/ means 'four' at all is the _assumed_ order
in which the numbers are supposed to be placed on some other dice that
had been found outside of the Etruscan sphere. But it's not the only
order possible and we don't really know how the Etruscans might have
ordered the numbers, if at all. It's pure assumption in the end.
The link between Ytte:nia and Tetrapolis is on the side of /hutH/
meaning "four", not "six".
In my scheme, there still is an order. Each side opposes the other by
a matter of three. So "6" opposes "3" (6-3 = 3) and "2" opposes "5"
(5-2 = 3), etc. We know that "three" is a divine number because of
trinities common throughout the Mediterranean and Middle-East (note the
union of Shamash, Nammu and Ishtar for example in Babylonian beliefs).
Further since /sempH/ is obviously a Semitic loan, it's likely that
/xa/ means "six" and is also a loan from a similar source. We also
have /xar/ "ten" which is Semitic in origin as well.
> What these numerals show, beyond any shadow of a doubt, [...]
I urge you to study Etruscan for yourself. I can demonstrate clearly
some outright falsifiable _lies_ that surface in even the more
credible books. I'll look right now in fact (since I'm at the library)
and will show you. Mayani being insane has a cornucopia of contradictions
but I've noticed what I thought to be ironclad translations crumbling
once I pursued my own internal investigation in books by Massimo. Here
too I've noticed inconsistent translations! Yikes!
As sad as I am to say this, there is only a smattering of vocabulary
that is certain (in the true sense of the word), particularly terms
denoting family members like /clan/ 'son', /apa/ 'father' and /ati/
'mother' and some very common verbs and _some_ of their tensual forms like
/tur-/ 'to give' and /turce/ 'has given'. The rest is rabid
theorizing that is often completely divorced of the texts we find and
shamefully dependent on ad hoc theories by madmen of old connecting the
language to all sorts of things from Latin to Albanian to Ukrainian.
Even the reknowned experts are not impervious to embarassing errors, no
doubt caused by their lack of conscientious examination and skepticism
of other authors and perhaps a lack of access to recent texts or the
openness of reasonable information now found on the internet (ignoring
the kook sites, of course).
> Another peculiarity of the Etruscan is the formation of numbers by
> subtraction, a system found also in Latin.
> Is there any possibility that quattro and a are related?
No. We reconstruct *kWetwores in IE, the ultimate source for Spanish
/quatro/ (one 't'). I would link IE *kWetwores with my retranslated
/hutH/ "four", however I believe the ancestral form of Etruscan /hutH/
was Tyrrhenian *hota. The *h relates to *kW (being typically delabialized
with the rounding transferred to the neighbouring vowel *o). I've stated
my view that Tyrrhenian and IE are sister languages of an older stage
I call Indo-Tyrrhenian, spoken circa 7000 - 6000 BCE. This is not
everyone's view however. It's certain that Etruscan is **NOT** an IE
language but there may be still an indirect relationship with it.
= gLeN