Re[2]: [tied] Re: Finnish KASKA

At 8:23:26 PM on Wednesday, February 20, 2008, Patrick Ryan
wrote:

> From: "etherman23" <etherman23@...>

[...]

>> Interesting. At one point you mention deriving *dwo: from
>> a dual of an unattested **dwo meaning one. The suggestion
>> was made to indicate an absurdity and you weren't
>> seriously proposing it. However, what if this suggestion
>> is correct? Of course it would be hard to prove without
>> an attested form of **dwo for one. But perhaps such an
>> attestation exists. Not in PIE, but in Etruscan. The
>> Etruscan number one is tHu(n).

> Sorry, but I am not aware pf thu(n), 'one'.

> Where does this come from?

There's a set of Etruscan dice on which the numbers are
spelled out in words: thu, zal, ci, s'a, mach, huth. These
must in some order be '1' through '6'. Other evidence shows
that <ci> is '3'; it appears opposite <s'a>, which is
therefore '4'. (Having opposite faces sum to 7 is an
ancient custom.) I don't recall the details, but when all
of the evidence is combined, it's most likely that the
numbers are '1' - '6' in the order in which I listed them.

Brian