Re: Sound changes causing divergence of ordinals from cardinals

--- Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:

> Chris Peters wrote:
>
> > For those of you unfamiliar with Japanese:  one
> set of roots is borrowed
> > from various dialects of Chinese.  These roots are
> combined with suffixes
> > in
> > order to count objects -- the suffixes change
> based on the shape of the
> > object being counted.  Therefore:
> >
> > "nihon" = two long, thin objects (pens, trees,
> neckties);
> > "nimai" = two thin, flat objects (pieces of paper,
> tickets, etc.);
> > "nisatsu" = two volumes (books, newspapers,
> magazines).
>
> I assume that -hon, -mai, -satsu etc. have meanings
> ??
>
> This is not unlike the Indonesian/Malay system (and
> I think widespread in
> Asia). Only the words with se- 'one' are written as
> one word:
>
Chinese, of course, does the same thing.  I lived in
Taiwan for three years and only learned a handfull of
the multitude of classifiers.  I won't bother to
include tone marks.

yi wei -- the polite way to count people
yi ge  -- the less polite way used with poeple
younger, lower in a hierarchy and generally when
politness is discarded
yi zi -- used for things like pens and pencils
yi ko -- used for coins, buttons, etc.
yi tou -- used for cows (and other large animals?)
yi zi -- (different character, but I believe same tone
as above) used for dogs (and other smaller animals)
yi ben -- used for books
yi liang -- used for cars (and some other vihicles,
but not bicycles IIRC)
yi tiao -- used for long (flexible) things


Wow.  I can't believe that many resurfaced.  There
were dozens more that I never learned, and I often
fell back on the "if you can't remember just use "ge"
principle expected in "foreigner-speak".

Adam

Jin xividjilud djal suñu ed falud ul Jozevu pomu instanchid ul andjelu djul
Dominu sivi, ed idavi achibid jun al su sposa. Ed nun aved cuñuxud ad sivi
ancha nadud jan ad ul sua huiju primodjindu ed cuamad il su numi ul Jezu.

Machu 1:24-25