Re: fingers

Hi!

# 1 <salut_vous_autre@...> writes:
> I have a question about fingers:
>
> How common is it in languages of the world to have diffenrent names
> for the 4 other fingers than the thumb? Names that are not only a
> distinction of sizes or order?
>
> I know that there aresuch names in French but not English. What's
> about the other languages?
Englisch has 'pointer' at least, although that's a word for something
else, too.  Dutch has 'pink' for the small finger, maybe for the
others, too?

> It is to know if I really need to create names for the 4 little
> fingers in addition of the generic word for finger or if people don't
> really need to be so specific or are confortable with using size/order
> distinction
German has special *compound* words for the individual fingers.  Sure
you don't *need* names for them.  German uses (number in piano
enumeration):

         fingers         toes
generic: Finger          Zeh
1:       Daumen          großer Zeh / großer Onkel (may be child language)
2:       Zeigefinger     -    (by analogy, 'Zeigezeh', but only as a joke)
3:       Mittelfinger    mittlerer Zeh
4:       Ringfinger      -
5:       kleiner Finger  kleiner Zeh

**Henrik

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