More about numbers

[llama_nom]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Fredrik" <gadrauhts at ...> wrote:
>
> In crimean they count with ite as one.
> What is that? Is it from ita = it?

Busbecq actually cites it as 'ita'. Yes, I think probably is from the
personal pronoun spelt the same in Biblical Gothic, unless perhaps
it's a contraction from the numeral 'ainata'.  This could well have
happened if it was used in unstressed positions, e.g. if it came to be
used as an indefinite article as in many other Germanic languages.

> 
> According to zompist the word for one is ene, what's the evidence of 
> that? http://zompist.com/euro.htm#ie

Must be a mistake, or somebody tried to reconstruct the masculine form
of 1 without realising that 2 and 3 are also neuter.

> 
> Why do the numbers in crimean gothic end with -e?
> e.g. sevene, nyne and thiine?

I don't know. Maybe the final -e in these numbers arose by analogy
with athe.

> 
> The e in athe is obvious coz it's a weakened 'au' I presume.


I think so. Compare sune (BG sunno), mine (BG mena), etc.

> 
> Should th in crimean be read as t?
> 
> And what about ii in thiine. Is that a long i or two syllables?
> if so I guess it should have been a short e in the first syllable and
> a schwa in the second.
>

I don't know about the 'ii'.  Maybe [i:]?  Grønvik thought that
initial /t/ and /d/ of Germanic had fallen together in Crimean Gothic
as a voiceless stop [t], which Busbeque spells variously 't' and 'th'
(similarly /b/ and /p/ > [p], as in 'plut').  But the forms 'goltz'
and 'statz' made him think that [þ] probably did still exist in
Crimean Gothic. Busbecq may not have represented it very accurately
because there was no such sound in his own language.

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