Re: fingers

Ingmar Roerdinkholder wrote:

> I'll look ik up in my Dutch etymologic dictionary - if I can find
> that... Maybe it's in the English ED too?
>
> But I still have the feeling *penkwe = five may has something to do
> with it

Strongly doubt it.  Germanic languages shift 'p' to 'f' in almost all
positions.  And, AFAIK, no language in the vicinity of Germanic
preserves both the labial stop and labiovelar stop.  [Latin, and thus
Romance, turns 'p' into 'q' (Latin 'quinque', French 'cinq', Spanish
'cinco', Italian 'cinque'), Celtic changes the initial 'p' to 'q', and,
in Brythonic, both resulting 'q's to 'p's (Welsh 'pump', Irish 'cu'ig')]

The only attested Indo-European languages preserving both a labial and a
velar are - some forms of Ancient Greek, and Lithunian.  I guess
'pinkie' could be a loan from one of the early Baltic languages, but I'm
doubtful.

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