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Indo-European origin of Numerals and Letters

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Cyrus Shahmiri View Drop Down
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  Quote Cyrus Shahmiri Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Indo-European origin of Numerals and Letters
    Posted: 04-Aug-2019 at 05:20
By comparing Old Persian, Armenian, Greek, Hittite, Indo-Aryan and other Indo-European languages which were spoken in the Near East, I think it is possible that both major number and letter signs in this region had an Indo-European origin and by considering the etymologies of cardinal numbers in proto-IE, it can be said that these signs related to fingers, for example proto-IE oḱtṓw "eight": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/o%E1%B8%B1t%E1%B9%93w is the dual of a stem *(H)oḱto- "four fingers".

First about Old Persian:


The original IE language was not certainly Old Persian but at least about these three numbers we see similar words, about "three" from proto-IE *tri, we see *t>s/z in the ancient IE languages in this region, like Ancient Greek and Hittite, compare to Ancient Greek su, Hittite zik from proto-IE *tu- "thou, you", so I think the original word was seri in this IE language.

So we have:


Old Persian cuneiform sign for 4 is "ku", not "ka", so the original language was in all probability a Centum language, like Hittite or Latin, not Satem.

For 6 we also see a word similar to Armenian wec, however it is certainly the original IE word (*weḱs), not the one which begins with sh/s under influence of Semitic.




Edited by Cyrus Shahmiri - 04-Aug-2019 at 05:21
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  Quote Arthur-Robin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-Aug-2019 at 22:58



NZ's mandatory fluoridation is not fair because it only forces it on the disadvantaged/some and not on the advantaged/everyone.
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