----- Original Message -----
From: "H.M. Hubey" <hubeyh@...>
To: <Nostratica@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 5:50 AM
Subject: Re: [Nostratica] Cardinal and Ordinal Integers



> If Germanic (English) f comes from PIE p, then it seems English first is cognate with the other *p words but then if Old English did not have it how did it get the f back? Apparently German does not have f either.

*furista- (OE fyrst), which is cognate to those *p- words continued to exist in Germanic with the meaning 'foremost in importance' or 'coming before all others'. *airista- was more common in West Germanic in the meaning 'first in serial order', but the two were very similar semantically and in English <first> has ousted <erst>. Similar shifts are frequent. In Polish, Slavic *vUtorU 'second' (archaic Pol. wtóry) has been replaced by <drugi>, previously meaning 'other'.

Piotr