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Re: fingers

From:Joe <joe@...>
Date:Monday, June 27, 2005, 18:13
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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Adam Walker <carrajena@...>