Re: "The" and possessives

On Tue, 22 May 2001, Roger Mills wrote:

> Just wondering-- is it a peculiarity of English (perhaps other Germanic?)
> that we count thousands by hundreds?  "nineteen hundred" "twenty-five
> hundred"etc.??
Dutch has it, but that's also Germanic, of course.

Valdyan has it too; it doesn't even *have* a word for "thousand",
it's _iranisin iran_ "hundreds ten".

It's perhaps interesting to take the numbers apart:
ran (cognate with _rain_ "hand")  5
i-                                dual prefix
iran "a pair of hands"            10
-i                                plural marker
irani "handses"                   100
-sen (in the plural -sin)         substantivizer
iransen "ten-thing"               a count of ten
iranisen "hundred-thing"          (a count of) a hundred, to make
                                  hundreds above 100
a-                                obsolete plural prefix, "all"
aran "all the hands"              20
arani                             200

   Irina

--
           Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
irina@valdyas.org (myself)     http://www.valdyas.org/irina/valdyas

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