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Re: fingers

From:Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Date:Friday, June 24, 2005, 12:00
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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Julia "Schnecki" Simon <helicula@...>