century, events, deaths

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "ualarauans" <ualarauans at ...> wrote:
>
> --- 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)?

The gemination in Old Norse *could* come from the loss of a nasal
preceding the -t-. I'm not sure if it does in this case though. Maybe
I was too hasty to dismiss the possibility of -anda- in Gothic?
According to the OED, "the first element [of English 'twenty'] is
variously explained as a nom. plur. (OE. twégen) and as a dative
form." More specifically the regular masculine nominative plural, OE
twégen, bégen = Go. twai, bai. If it is a nominative plural, then
presumably we want Gothic twai-. I hadn't though of dative till now,
but that would give us twaim-tiguþa, or twaim-tigosta, etc. and
þrim-tiguþa, etc. after which the units stop being marked for case and
we can relax! (Compare Old Norse compounds like hugum-stórr) But
against this theory is the fact that there's no sign of a dative
ending in thirty. But then, since twai- would be transparently
nominative in Gothic, presumably it would change case according to
context. Using the prefic twi- is tempting, and would also remove a
lot of our dilemmas. And it is attested elsewhere in Gothic.

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

The gemination in OE (and shortening of the vowel) is a later
development. Earlier OE has þrítig.

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

Right. Hence the racking of our poor brains!

> 
> > 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)" :)

That Icelandic idiom also ties in with the way Icelandic and German
anticipate the next hour in giving clock times, unlike
backwards-looking English: hálfníu = halb neun = half eight. I wonder
how many working hours have been lost due to that little quirk, or
duellists lives saved ;-)

LN

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