Klarinet Archive - Posting 000231.txt from 2005/09

From: "Lelia Loban" <lelialoban@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Pinky again
Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:05:32 -0400


>My wife, who is beginning a conversation
>course in Lithuanian, started by memorising
>the numbers. So as an exercise, I asked her
>to tell me what our telephone number was in
>Lithuanian, and thereby learned that the
>Lithuanian for 5 is 'penki'. (Fits with the 'penta-'
>prefix, a connection that didn't get made when
>we discussed it.)

Well, I'll be dipped. The things one can learn on this list! Never
occurred to me that we say "pinkie" for a genuine *reason* that *makes
sense*.
:-)

Should have occurred to me, too, since I live near the Pentagon; although,
in the Romance languages (at least in Spanish, Italian and French), the
words for "fifth" don't follow the "penta" model, and instead derive from
"quinta" in Latin. In Germanic languages, as in English, the words for
"fifth" come from "fünf" (hope Earthlink doesn't mutilate the second
letter, which should be u with umlaut).

Not all of the Slavic languages follow the Lithuanian, which is probably
just as well, since in Czech, "fifth" is "páty" (if EarthLink mutilates the
ASCII text, the second letter should come out as an "a" with an acute
accent and the fourth letter as a "y" with acute accent). It's pronounced
just similarly enough to a familiar word in English that I'm sure grade
school kids would never be able to resist saying "potty-finger," with all
of its most unfortunate associations, if our word for the fifth finger had
come from Czech....

Thanks for the information, Tony.

Lelia Loban

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