century, events, deaths

[ualarauans]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <600cell@> wrote:
> 
> Old English turns the -tig of the cardinal decades into -tigoþa for
> the ordinals: twéntigoþa, þrittigoþa, féowertigoþa, fíftigoþa, ...,
> hundtéontiogoþa. When combined with a unit, either the decade or 
the
> unit, there are two possibilities: twá and twenigoþa; óþer éac
> twentigum. Old High German has: zweinzugôsto, drîzugôsto, ...,
> zehanzugôsto. Units are added without a conjunction: niunzugôsto
> fiordo. Old Norse adds the suffix -andi: tuttugandi, þrítugandi,
> fertugandi, fimmtugandi, ...  The ordinals of 100 and 1000 aren't
> recorded in Old Norse, but Modern Icelandic has: hundraðasti,
> þúsundasti. It turns both decades and units into ordinals and 
places
> them either way round: tuttugandi ok fyrstr, fyrstr ok tuttugandi.
> 
> Which gives us a few possibilities for Gothic. Maybe we should 
avoid
> working backwards from Old Norse -gandi on the assumption that this
> could be a later form created by analogy with the teens. -da is
> attested as an ordinal suffix in Gothic, so we could reconstruct
> *-tiguþa (with devoicing of /d/ to /þ/ according to the usual rule 
of
> dissimilation), or possibly *-tiguda (with restoration of /d/ by
> analogy). Or, on the basis of Old High German, we could reconstruct
> *-tugosta.
> 
> *twai-tiguþa
> *twai-tigosta

OE twén- and OHG zwein- seem to suggest some weird form of "two". 
Maybe, Go. *twaina-? Or *twi- like in ON? And why the geminated -tt- 
(tuttugu)? Couldn't it be in Gothic (*twittigosta)?

What about "three" in "thirty"? *þreitigosta (like OHG) or 
*þrittigoda (like OE)?

Looks like there was no pan-Germanic archetyp for ordinals over 19, 
right?

> Alternatively it might be better to dodge the issue of suffixes and
> reconstructions and just assume that the word for decade remained a
> noun still in Gothic, as with ordinals: anþar tigus, þridja 
tigus, ...
> etc. Compare the Old Norse idiom: hálfr þriði tøgr manna "25 men"
> (literally "half [of] the third decade of men); hálft annat hundrat
> "150" (literally "half [of] the second hundred).

In which case we'd say sa aiws twaddje tigiwe hunde aþne usliþanaize 
fram X''au gabauranamma? Reminds me of the speech of the Maya shaman 
in Apocalypto :) The year 2008 – þata anþarþûsundjosto jah ahtudo 
jer aldais X''aus? Or, alternatively, "twos þûsundjos jere jah nauh 
ahtau usliþana waurþun und hita fram jainai naht in Nazaraiþ, 
jah ... (you tell what happens in 2008)" :)

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