From: Roger Mills (romilly@egl.net)
Date: Sat Jul 05 2003 - 13:50:30 EST
James Campbell wrote:
>OK, so not Romance-related, but I thought it might be of interest anyway.
It really seems that in these languages, 8 is "10 minus 2" and 9 is "10
minus 1".
>I wonder if languages of another group count 8 and 9 like that...
At least one other-- Malay/Indonesian and its relatives:
(alap and ambil both mean 'take [away] ')--
eight: Ml. delapan < dua-alap+an 'two taking(s)'
nine: Ml. sembilan < se-ambil+an 'one taking'
Sundanese: salapan
(In Ml., pre-tonic vowels tend to coalesce and reduce to schwa, written "e")
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