"Five" in In Glory Like Their Star [Digest

James Jordan · 09 Oct 2001, 16:24 · from urth-v0030.mbox · original

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From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at home.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Re: "Five" in In Glory Like Their Star [Digest
Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2001 16:24:11
Message-ID: <urth-v0030-0707 at digest.urth.net>
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At 04:20 PM 10/9/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>The PIE for "five" is *penkwe, not *pan
>
>The PIE for "all" is *pan or *pant.
>
>I don't have my references here, but I believe
>the two are distinct.
>
>         -John

Hmmm. I'm no expert here at all, but I happened to be listening to a series=20
of lectures on the History of the English Language from The Teaching=20
Company, and the speaker said that "five" and "all" (pn and pn) were=20
basically the same.That's what jogged my dim memory. I don't recall if=20
that's because of the number of digits in a hand.  At any rate, the real=20
question is what Wolfe thought, given the way he likes to trade on=20
etymologies, and this explanation is all I've come up with that begins to=20
make sense. I guess somebody could ask Wolfe, but he'd probably just smile.=
...

Jim Jordan

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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