Re: Borrowed numerals (was: Inuktitut (Canada))

Isaac Penzev wrote:
>
> Danny Wier scripsit:
>
> <<Being a purist in a lot of things, I wonder why a language would
> borrow from
> other languages for numbers less than a hundred! Swahili does borrow
> 'six',
> 'seven' and 'nine' from Arabic, but that's Swahili.>>
>
> AFAIK, Komi uses Russian numerals for numbers higher than ten.
Japanese has borrowed Chinese numerals.  The numbers 10 and below are
still sometimes used, but the Chinese numbers have been slowly edging
them out.  The native numbers over 10 are virtually forgotten, except
that the multiples of ten are kept to refer to decadal birthdays (tho
few realize that that's the origin), and "thousand" and "ten thousand"
are kept in a few names.