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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
To: "Patrick Ryan" <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 10:10 PM
Subject: 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 of 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

Brian, people have been spatting over those dice for a long time. No
Etruscan dictionary I know includes <thu>, 'one', though you may, of course,
be right.

Pstrick