Patrick Chew > wrote:

>	Mand	Cant	Tois	Kor	Jap	Thai
>
>1	?i	yat	yIt	il	it$i	ni"N/-et
>2	@r	yi	Nei	i	ni	sO:N/yi-
>3	san	sa:m	lha:m	sam	san	sa:m
>4	sI"	sei	lhei	sa	$i	si
>5	?u	N	N	o	go	ha:
>6	liou	lUk	lUk	(L)juk	roku	hok
>7	chi	t$at	tIt	t$Il	$it$i	cet
>8	pa	pa:t	pa:t	p'al	hat$i	p&t
>9	ciu	kau	kiu	ku	ku/kyu	kau
>10	s.I"	sap	sIp	$Ip	dZu:	sIp
>
>	hrm... well.. there sems to be more than a surface similarity here..
>especially when one takes into account previous stages of the languages:
>

ack. I don't know about Toisan, Korean or Thai, but the reason the
Japanese numerals you cite look like Chinese numerals is that they
_are_ Chinese numerals. South Chinese, to be exact. The "native"
Japanese numerals from 1 to 10 are:

hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu, yottsu, itsutsu, muttsu, nanatsu, yattsu,
kokonotsu, and too.

The common "tsu" particle on the end of the numerals appears to be a
pseudo-classifier and may have been adopted at the time the common
numeral-and-classifier system was borrowed from Chinese, sometime
between the 2d and 6th centuries CE. "Native" numbers beyond 10 are
lost in the mists of time, except for 20, which may be "hatachi" or
"hata"-something.

Number words can be borrowed and frequently are. Furthermore, number
words may not be related even in related languages. For example, in
the Eastern Algonkian languages there are at least three sets of
number words (this caused some problems in the reconstruction of the
Powhatan language). One or two of these sets of number words was
clearly related to body parts, and possibly to some form of sign
language.

I am frankly skeptical of anyone who claims that certain kinds of
words are "more conservative" or "less susceptible to borrowing" than
others.

For instance, personal pronouns are often cited as conservative --
Greenberg cites n/m as the standard Amerind "I/you" pattern in
contrast to the m/t standard Euroasiatic patterm. But in Japanese, for
cultural reasons, personal pronouns are among the least conservative
vocabulary items. For "me" we have watashi / atashi / washi / ore /
boku; similarly for "you". The reason is that in polite Japanese
speech the personal pronoun -- esp. first person -- is avoided, so
over the centuries the word for "me" has been replaced by euphemism
after euphemism. Clearly this could happen in other languages.

Maybe I'd buy the notion of body-part names being conservative, but
what if the mention of body parts were impolite in some culture or
another? Same thing could happen.

 (Cluster User) wrote:
>
>as I have mentioned, sumerian has been connected with
>the basque - etruscan - cauacsian - burushaski - 
>sino tibetan - na dene (canada) hypothetical superfamily, 
>specifically  with caucasian. the evidence I heard is a common 
>numbering  system with basque and caucasian and the fact that 
>caucasian is also agglutunative. I repeat, I would like to know
>more about the subject. 

Well, the "common numbering system" argument might hold a little
water, if true (though number words can be borrowed, cf. Japanese),
but the "agglutinative" argument isn't worth much. Typology (eg
inflecting vs isolating vs agglutinative, or verb-subject-object(VSO)
vs SOV vs SVO) is a useful way of describing present languages.
However, there are many cases where known related languages have quite
different types, and this casts doubt on the use of typology to show
relation.

For instance, in the case of word order, Welsh, English, and German
are all Indo-European but Welsh is primarily VSO, English SVO and
German is a mixture of SVO and SOV (depending on what kind of clause
you are talking about.)

Finnish is generally considered agglutinative, with a low fusional
index, whereas the closely related Estonian has a high enough index of
fusion to be considered inflecting. Amongst IE languages, Russian is
highly inflected while English is mostly isolating.

It gets worse when you consider the opposite case -- languages that
share a typology but are thought not to be related. For instance,
Turkish, Japanese, and Tamil are strongly verb-final, but they are not
considered to be related (some think Japanese may be very distantly
related to Turkish, but that argument itself is mostly typological in
nature). Agglutinating languages include Turkish, Zulu, Hungarian,
Algonkian, and Inuit. I doubt these are related at all.

It's a lot easier to prove that languages are related than that they
are not. So maybe Sumerian is indeed related to Basque. Of course all
languages are probably related through some unreconstructible "common
world" ancestor -- the alternative would be truly absurd -- but that
isn't what most people mean when they say language X is related to
language Y.

Kedves Fischer Gyuri!

Azt irod a soc.culture.magyar listan, hogy:

>Ami az "angolositast" illeti az viszont jellemzo egesz europara ( a nem
>angol nyelvteruletre, tehat Svedorszagra is. Ennek sok magyarazata lehet:
>nincs " nyelvor", aki hajlamos lenne keresni megfelelo kifejezest-vagy azt
>sokkal kenyelmesebb eredeti -angol-formajaban hasznalni. Eppen a magyar
>computernyelv megprobalta "magyarositani" a computer kifejezeseket,=20

Igazad van: bar egymas kozott mi mindig komputerrol, fajl-rol, rekordrol,
printerrol, monitorrol, formatalasrol, sot - horribile  dictu! -
belodolasrol es kiszevelesrol beszelunk, a hivatalos es irott szaknyelvben
megvannak a megfelelo magyar kifejezesek, amelyek nehezen jonnek az ember
szajara es helyenkent komikusnak tunnek.

>                 igy
>lett komikusan a memoriabol  "verem"- ami egy Karinthy fele forditasnak
>felelne majd meg...a nemet nylvbol.

Itt azonban, ha megengeded, vitaba szallok veled. A "verem" nem a memoria,
hanem a "stack" magyar megfeleloje, es veletlenul igen kifejezo, t.i. azt
vehetem ki elsonek belole, amit utoljara beletettem (LIFO).

>                                        nem ertem, hogy
>miert kell pl. a drog-szot hasznalni, mikor arra regi magyar szo is volna.(
>kabitoszer)

Sot, van ra uj magyar szo is: ka'bszer (ugy, mint ta'pszer, kegyszer,
kotszer, ovszer, ezerszer vagy Pusztaszer :-).

Meg mindig latin, de mas:

Kocsis Tamas > igy ir:

>>Az olaszok sok latin sz=F3t m=E1sk=E9pp, olaszosan mondanak.[..]
>>Pl.: suscepit =3D szuszcs=E9pit, resurget =3D rezurdzset stb.
>> Amerikai lemezeken is ezt hallja az ember.
>Nemet nyelvteruleten is igy ejtik a latin szavakat,
>bar ez az informacio szigoruan csak azokon a korus-
>muveken alapszik, amelyeket igy hallottam vagy
>igy vannak meg CD-n.
>Tamas

Pontosan igy van. Idegbajt lehet kapni, amikor a szopran szolista rakezdi:
"aaaaaaaaannyusz dei, qui tollis peccata muundi...."

Udvozlettel:
Jalsovszky Gyorgy