Number 'nine' in Chiwere.

[Rankin, Robert L.]

> Yes!  That sounds like a very nice find.  Keep it up with that speaker!  :)

> The only thing that crosses my mind is Lakhota napciyuNka, Santee napciwaNka, meaning ‘nine’, which seems excessively long for a common number.  Perhaps it is related to the /napci/ part of those words somehow?

I think perhaps the Dakotan term relates to counting in sign language where 'nine' leaves one finger bent over, i.e., "lying", in the palm of the hand.  napcóka is 'palm' and yųka and wąka are ‘to lie’ in Lakota and the so-called D-dialects respectively, so I don't think Sky's term is related to the napci- part of the Dakotan term, although I'm afraid I don't have anything better to offer except the obvious fact that it looks like English 'nine', [nayn] with a metathesis of the y and n.

Interesting contribution.  I hope someone figures it out.

By the way, could I make a plea for us to try to make the subject line of our postings accurate and up-to-date?  I'm more guilty than most of leaving the subject lines intact when the topic shifts, but if our search mechanism looks primarily at subject lines when looking for pertinent information, we're not doing future linguists any favor retaining old information in the headings.

Bob

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