kevin wrote:If you want to avoid having such fears in the future, you know what you need to do.
Kill it completely?
Moderators:''', Forum Administrators
kevin wrote:If you want to avoid having such fears in the future, you know what you need to do.
Dormouse559 wrote:All roads lead to Proto-Indo-European "Four", ceathair and the Romance words all come from PIE *kʷetwóres. On the way to Proto-Germanic, /kʷ/ shifted to /p/, which in turn became /f/, and that's why most Germanic languages' words for "four" begin with /f/ or /v/. The Celtic and Romance progenitors kept /kʷ/, and it was only in certain of their descendants that /kʷ/ became a labial (see Eastern Romance, Sardinian, Brythonic).
Dormouse559 wrote:The /θ/ in "fourth" is actually unconnected.
księżycowy wrote:It's just Meera, Hidson, Vijay, Paul, and me.
kevin wrote:Also probably worth mentioning, while Old Irish indeed still had /θ/, <th> is pronounced /h/ in Modern Irish. Still the same origin, of course. /k/ isn't true of all Celtic languages either, Brythonic has /p/ like in Welsh "pedwar".
kevin wrote:a cúig déag = fifteen
cúig bhád déag = fifteen boats (the -teen comes after the counted object)
cúig bhád déag mhóra = fifteen big boats (adjectives stay after the -teen)
cúig bhád déag mhóra is trí fichid = 75 big boats (vigesimal system: 15 big boats and 3x20)
kevin wrote:These days, decimal "cúig bhád mhóra is seachtó" (five big boats and seventy) would be more common, but also more boring.
linguoboy wrote:a is easily the hardest-working particle in Irish. In some case, we can tell it's a worn-down version of a preposition (mainly do), but the a used before numerals already has this form in Old Irish, so it's difficult to say where it ultimately comes from. AFAIK, there's nothing similar in Brythonic or the Continental Celtic languages.
linguoboy wrote:In addition to being used in counting, a also appears in certain contexts where English would have an ordinal, e.g. Séamas II/Séamas a Dó = James II/James the Second. It's also necessary where the number is used to distinguish entities, e.g. RTÉ a hAon (RTÉ One), RTÉ a Dó (RTÉ2).
dEhiN wrote:kevin wrote:/k/ isn't true of all Celtic languages either, Brythonic has /p/ like in Welsh "pedwar".
Is this true of Cornish and Breton as well, or just Welsh? That is, did /k/ become /p/ in Proto-Brythonic? Also, does anyone know what Gaulish had? For some reason, ever since reading Asterix as a kid, I've always been fascinated with what the Gauls would've actually spoken, even though, you know....Asterix and the gang are fictional...
Vigesimal system?! Very cool! Lol, the more I hear about languages like Irish, the more I think French's sixty-ten and four-twenty-ten are quite tame in comparison.
Do Irish linguists have some guesses or thoughts on where the use of a particle before numerals could've come from in the evolution of Proto-Irish to Old Irish?
What about an ordinal that's more adjectival and not part of a proper name/title, like "the second house"? Also, would movie sequels count for entities, like "Indiana Jones" vs "Indiana Jones 2"? I would imagine so, since for me, it fits with RTÉ One vs RTÉ2.
dEhiN wrote:I'm so sorry Paul! I can't believe I forgot about you! You were one of the original los cuatro amigos.
dEhiN wrote:Also, grammatically, could this particle be analysed as akin to counters used in Japanese and Korean, except as like a "counter for just the numerals"? Maybe that doesn't make any sense...I just thought of the connection is how the particle is used and was wondering if that could be an accurate connection to draw.
dEhiN wrote:linguoboy wrote:In addition to being used in counting, a also appears in certain contexts where English would have an ordinal, e.g. Séamas II/Séamas a Dó = James II/James the Second. It's also necessary where the number is used to distinguish entities, e.g. RTÉ a hAon (RTÉ One), RTÉ a Dó (RTÉ2).
What about an ordinal that's more adjectival and not part of a proper name/title, like "the second house"? Also, would movie sequels count for entities, like "Indiana Jones" vs "Indiana Jones 2"? I would imagine so, since for me, it fits with RTÉ One vs RTÉ2.
dEhiN wrote:kevin wrote:księżycowy wrote:"Felt"?
Ná bí dána, a Phóil!
You should see some of the things he says in our Discord chat! (I used GT for what you said, and it gave me, "Don't be naught, Paul!" I hope that's a good translation, if not, my reply may not apply! )
Also, apparently Paul has forgotten how to count in Irish. This morning, I gave him a challenge because he was bored: count to 100 but switch languages every 10 numbers, and you can't use English. Of course, Vijay took up the challenge
and passed it no problem. His languages of choice? Arabic, Amharic, Mandarin Chinese, Vlax Romani, Turkish, Malayalam, Swahili, Basque, Persian and Russian.
I suppose if someone else who doesn't consider English to be a native language were doing this, the rule would probably be to not use their native language(s). In my case, I could only really do 1-450:
Japanese: ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyou, juu
Portuguese: onze, doze, treze, quatorze, quinze, dezesseis, dezessete, dezoito, dezenove, vinte
Spanish: veintiuno, veintidós, veintitrés, veinticuatro, veinticinco, veintiséis, veintisiete, veintiocho, veintinueve, treinta
Tamil: muppathinondu, muppathirandu, muppathimuundu, muppathinaala, muppathinainju, muppathinaaRu, muppathineezhu, muppathineTTu, muppathinonbathu, naapathu
French: quarante et un, quarante-deux, quarante-trois, quarante-quatre, quarante-cinq, quarante-six, quarante-sept, quarante-huit, quarante-neuf, cinquante
Wow, that was a lot harder than I thought! I admit, I had to look up the spellings for several of them, particuarly between Spanish and Portuguese.
księżycowy wrote:I couldn't even do up to ten in most of the languages I've studied.
Irish: a haon, a dó, a trí.....
Polish: Fuck that.
German: eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, oacht, neun, zehn
Japanese: ichi, ni, san, yon, go, roku, nana, hachi, kyouu, juu
That's about it.
Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:I hate counting. Numbers are stupid and boring and I hate them.
NB: I understand numbers are important, thank you numbers for all you have done!
dEhiN wrote:I remember when Vijay was counting, I told him how I'm jealous and how does he do it, and his response was that it's pretty easy. I told him though that the numbers weren't one of the first things I learned in a language.
Most texts for beginners would, I imagine, include counting from 1 to 10.
kevin wrote:But then, he always forgets to participate in the study groups he started himself, so maybe we can't set the expectations too high?
I suppose if someone else who doesn't consider English to be a native language were doing this, the rule would probably be to not use their native language(s). In my case, I could only really do 1-40
I noticed that I have trouble finding Romance languages where I know all ten numbers in a row. Let me see what else I can use.
Spanish: uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez
Czech: jedenáct, dvanáct, třináct, čtvrnáct, patnáct, šestnáct, sedmnáct, osmnáct, devatenáct, dvacet
Irish: fiche a haon, fiche a dó, fiche a trí, fiche a ceathair, fiche a cúig, fiche a sé, fiche a seacht, fiche a hocht, fiche a naoi, tríocha
Dutch: eenendertig, tweeëndertig, drieëndertig, vierendertig, vijfendertig, zesendertig, zevenendertig, achtendertig, negenendertig, veertig
I could add English, German and Swabian, depending on what the exact English/native language rule is, but I don't think I can do 41-50 in any other language.
dEhiN wrote:It was called "los cuatro amigos" before Hidson
joined, and now it's "năm người bạn", which apparently means the five friends in Vietnamese
WIthout looking anything up, I guess Czech is similar to English where a form of or the word for ten is appended to the end of the number? Compare -teen vs -náct.
According to Vijay, none of the Indo-Aryan languages have a pattern up to 100 at all, so you literally have to memorize each number. He tried showing an example once, but I swear, for me it seemed like there was a pattern. Chances are I was just glossing similar looking words together into a pattern.
Vigesimal system?! Very cool! Lol, the more I hear about languages like Irish, the more I think French's sixty-ten and four-twenty-ten are quite tame in comparison.
vijayjohn wrote:I could add English, German and Swabian, depending on what the exact English/native language rule is, but I don't think I can do 41-50 in any other language.
What about 51-100?
kevin wrote:Come to think of it, I could probably do both in that conlang (if it even deserves to be called that) we created back then at school. But it's probably better for everyone if we just pretend that it never existed.
vijayjohn wrote:So how's your job going?
vijayjohn wrote:Do you still have to deal with French and Spanish a lot?
dEhiN wrote:vijayjohn wrote:So how's your job going?
Really well, thanks for asking?
It's too bad you don't live up here, or you could've applied for the new job opening!
vijayjohn wrote:Any particular reason for the question mark?
I'm actually trying (well, in theory...) to start my own business using Twitter, however stupid of an idea that may be.
vijayjohn wrote: I could also help with searching for things; I've noticed people sometimes have trouble finding what they want, and I'm relatively good at doing that.
vijayjohn wrote:What made you think specifically of that, of all things?
księżycowy wrote:vijayjohn wrote:What made you think specifically of that, of all things?
The fact that you have yet to deliver.
Return to “Language Logs and Blogs”
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests