From owner-freebsd-chat Wed May 22 23:26:48 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from postfix2-2.free.fr (postfix2-2.free.fr [213.228.0.140]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D3E4B37B40C for ; Wed, 22 May 2002 23:26:45 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bluerondo.a.la.turk (nas-cbv-9-62-147-160-129.dial.proxad.net [62.147.160.129]) by postfix2-2.free.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8DD1B5FBE6 for ; Thu, 23 May 2002 08:26:44 +0200 (CEST) Received: (qmail 423 invoked by uid 1001); 23 May 2002 06:26:40 -0000 Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 08:26:40 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey Cc: cjc26@cornell.edu, Brad Knowles , chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Sanskrit numbers (was: French, Flemish and English (was: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha clock.c)) Message-ID: <20020523062640.GB237@lpt.ens.fr> References: <20020522192335.P47352@lpt.ens.fr> <20020522215236.GA1640@lpt.ens.fr> <20020523144550.C230@wantadilla.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20020523144550.C230@wantadilla.lemis.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.27i X-Operating-System: FreeBSD 4.6-PRERELEASE i386 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Greg 'groggy' Lehey said on May 23, 2002 at 14:45:50: > > That's pretty interesting, and much more believable than the > > reconstruction of sounds... but not *entirely* believable. The > > words for "chicken" or "iron" could have changed for some relatively > > minor reason -- compare "iron" and "steel" in English, whose > > distinction is not terribly important in practice. > > Indeed. I note that in some Aryan language (Hindi?), a word for goose > is "Hans". In Iranian, it's "Ghans", and in German it's "Gans". This > suggests that geese were known in PIE times, so why not chickens? "Hansa" in Sanskrit/Hindi means swan, not (afaik) goose, but perhaps close enough. (On that topic, what does "Lufthansa" mean? Given that the emblem is a flying swan, many in India think it means "flying swan" but I'm told there's no such word in German.) > There seems to be quite a bit of confusion about metals. My book > suggested "hatakam" for gold in Sanskrit. I haven't heard that one, but you seem to be right. The most common word is "swarna", and there is also "kanaka", etc. Similarly, there are at least seven or eight words for "lotus." Presumably it's because these were significant objects to them. - Rahul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message