Counting by 10s vs. 20s

[Laurence Horn]

On Aug 22, 2013, at 9:26 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 8/22/2013 04:02 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> On Aug 22, 2013, at 3:57 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>
>> > At 8/22/2013 03:47 PM, Geoffrey Steven Nathan wrote:
>> >
>> >> It is vestigial in modern French,
>> >
>> > Otherwise known as the vestigial vigesimal, of course.
>> >
>> > My question is not really about how pure it is in
>> > French, nor where it arose and spread to.  But
>> > rather, *why* did it arise?  Lost in prehistory,
>> > but that has never discouraged speculators.
>> >
>> > Joel
>>
>> Back then the French mostly went around wearing
>> sandals, which made it easy for them to keep
>> track of their counts with toes as well as fingers.  Speculative enough?
>
> That's similar to the speculation in my original
> message ("Did  European serfs of colder Northern
> Europe wear shoes, while the peasants of warmer
> Southern Europe went barefoot?").

Oops, sorry about that.  Yes, these are basically the same speculation, which just shows it must be right.  Now, we can get back to fine-tuning the shouting-across-the-Alps theory of the origin of Grimm's Law.

LH

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