Re: Mille (thousand)

From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 54901
Date: 2008-03-09

----- Original Message -----
From: Francesco Brighenti

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:

> I will add that Chinese qian1 [tçhjän]
> possibly from *gho-y-in
> tends to prove that
> something like *gh_l or *gh_zl- makes sense
> but starting with -sl- the result should be qian4.
> So a proto-form is not clear *ghezlo/*gheslo ?
> although the meaning is clear.

Excuse me? What are you postulating: a "Proto-Sinitic-IE" numeral
1000? What would this proto-form *gho-y-in represent? An early
borrowing from IE?
=================
Having no particular dogma to sell,
I try to look at data in order to understand
what we can get from it.

Chinese Mandarin san1 "three"
and Tibetan gsum have a clear relationship
with Uralic Hungarian ha:rom.
and Basque hiru with loss of -m
These can be cognates.
My reconstruction is ka?-t_?om.
(one + two= three)
Next
Number seven :
Chinese qi1 < *tsat
PIE sept
PAA *tsap-(plus suffixes)

Chinese looks like a loanword from an
early PIE source that still had the affricate *ts
as initial.

=================

In any event, the Chinese proto-form is likely to have been *chi:n-
'1000, to be a thousand'. It may also have some cognates within the
Tibeto-Burman family:

http://tinyurl.com/32rbeu
http://tinyurl.com/3xd3hj
===============

I let you explain
how ChaoZhou koin31 can be derived from *tshi:n !!
Good luck. My beloved comrade...

I prefer *ghoyin.
No doubt, as Torsten likes to say.

As for ST connections, I don't think
1000 is the same thing as a growth of the jungle.

Lushai 10 000 may be a loanword from late chinese
or have no connection at all.

Arnaud
=============


In Shang shell and bone inscriptions the corresponding character is
千, a pictograph of a person with a line drawn at the shin to
indicate extension forward, suggesting that 1000 = number reached by
counting on and on.

============

Traditional explanation is :
Shi Bai Ye. Cong Shi, Ren Sheng.

That is to say (when unzipped) :
Qian1 is ten hundreds.
The character "ten" (Shi) is the lower part of the character.
The upper part "man" (Ren) is a phonetic approximation.
(Older phonetics was Qian = tçhi:n and ren < (n)zin).

MAy I know what your source is for explaining
Chinese Characters ?
I'm afraid it's bad.

Arnaud

==============
Apparently this has no conceptual and semantic
relation whatsoever with PIE *g^Heslo-, especially is the latter is
related, as Piotr has suggested, with *g^Héso:r/*g^Hesr- 'hand'.

Regards,
Francesco
============

The connection between *gheslo- and word "hand"
is fun.
I don't rate this as information or data.

Arnaud
===============