Re: Odd thing.

Tim Talpas wrote:
>There seems to be a trend in some FU langs where the words for 8 and 9
>are based on the number 10... in the same manner of finnish...
>
>like mansi 10 "lov", 9 "ontolov", 8 "nyololov" (or something like that)
>
The same thing has happened in Malay and several languages influenced by it:
Ml. delapan 8 < **dua alapan 'two takings'
Sundanese/Makassarese salapan(g)  9 < sa alapan 'one taking'
Ml. itself adapted another word here-- sembilan < **sa ambilan 'one taking'
(probably when alap was replaced by ambil; presumably some earlier form of
Ml. must have had selapan, the source of the Sund. and Mak. forms, via
trade.  Ml. also innovated a word for 7, tujuh (also borrowed by Mak.)
related to a word for 'to point' (i.e. with the index finger).
Buginese and other South Celebes langs., related to Mak., also innovated,
but used native terms-- kadua 8 < 'second', kasera 9 presumably 'first', but
the form sera does not otherwise occur.
The point is that Malayo-Polynesian had perfectly good words for all the
numbers 1-10, and they survive almost everywhere else, including Javanese,
which has had almost as much influence on langs. of the area as Malay.