-
numbers across languages
1
4 August 2008bangkok, language, sanskrit language, thai language, thailandthere are often similarities between numbers, due in part to the fact that thousands of years ago numbers were the main thing that different populations needed to communicate for trade purposes. i would love to read more on the similarities between numbers across the world, but have been thinking about the following one lately.
in sanskrit, the word for 100 is शतीम् (śatim) in thai we have สตางค์ (sa dtaang) (listen) which is 1/100th of a baht (kinda like a penny, or cent) and ศตวรรษ (soht wat) (listen) which means century. the words for century in spanish and french are siècle and siglo. interesting how they all maintain a s (or c) sound to start and are generally phonetically similar. there is a list of sanskrit numbers here at http://veda.wikidot.com/sanskrit-numbers i’d be interested to hear what other people might know on this topic.
One Response to “numbers across languages”
-
gop
Thanks for posting this topic,it is very
interesting ;-)Is Sanskrit difficult to learn ? I think writing should be hard. It is a little bit confused in term of meaning. For example,in Sanskrit,the number for 50 is 40 :-o (http://veda.wikidot.com/sanskrit-numbers)
Btw, these are some similarities of Chinese,Japanese and Thai numbers.
In chinese, the word for 4 is “si/suh” in Thai is
“see” (in Korean is “sa”)
In chinese, the word for 3 is “san/sahn” in Thai is
“sam” (in Japanese is “san”)(and in Korean is “san” )
In chinese, the word for 10 is “shi” in Thai is
“sib” (in Korean is “ship” )
Recent Comments