Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 08:26:40 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> To: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> Cc: cjc26@cornell.edu, Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>, 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> In-Reply-To: <20020523144550.C230@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <20020522192335.P47352@lpt.ens.fr> <Pine.SOL.3.91.1020522160649.23407A-100000@travelers.mail.cornell.edu> <20020522215236.GA1640@lpt.ens.fr> <20020523144550.C230@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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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
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