Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 August 13

= August 13 =

Looking for a word in Arabic
...that means "ballot" or "lots". The common etymon of Swahili kura and Hausa ƙuri'a. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 20:13, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The verb root is قرع. The noun is قرعة /qur‘a(t)/ (Wiktionary does not give this, though).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:24, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Could you also help with finding the right derivative of طُوب that is the common etymon of Swahili tofali and Hausa tubali? —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 00:04, 22 August 2017 (UTC)
 * طفل /ṭafl/ "clay", and طفال /ṭufāl/ "potter's clay". See also here.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 07:25, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

40 in Russian
Why is 40 in Russian a word of Turkish origin?? Usually, all names of numbers in the 1-1000 interval are native to the languages being spoken. 40 in Russian is one of the few exceptions. Any reason?? Georgia guy (talk) 20:56, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The word is not from Turkish, but (possibly, not necessarily) borrowed from a Turkic language quite a long time ago. As for why that might happen, basic numbers are not immune to borrowing, so it should not be inherently surprising. In Thai, the word for "three" is borrowed from a Sinitic language! —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 21:02, 13 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Someone should ping Lyuboslov Yezykin who can remember his real user name. (Can we please create redirects to usernames?)  One obvious reason would be for trade reasons.  The word dozen comes from French, and is a common amount used in trade, although it did not supplant 12.  French itself has an odd Vigesimal system, when Latin's system was transparently decimal and largely parallel to modern English. μηδείς (talk) 22:15, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * сорок seems to favor a trade unit. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 23:00, 13 August 2017 (UTC)


 * You can see what Wiktionary says at сорок -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:02, 13 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Its Turkic origin is just one version, and it must be really old (from Hunnic, Avar or Bulgar?). Another version is from Greek. But the most likely version for me seems from the word for shirt (old сорокъ, modern сорочка), which might mean a sack for furs and later a sack for exactly 40 furs. Nobody will answer you why this happened, and linguistics very often fails to answer why. My suggestion they used this trade jargon so often that it became literally a synonym for forty and later supplanted the original numeral. Compare this with the history of the Romance languages where vulgar jargon often supplanted Latin words (e.g. testa, parabolare, etc.)--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:35, 13 August 2017 (UTC)