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Russian etymology question

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 12:40 am
by Sparg
I've found nothing on the net about this and none of the natives I've dealt with have a clue, so I thought I'd throw it out here.

The morphology of Russian numerals is very logical, except for the word for "forty", sorok. It is completely unique. My first Russian instructor, Mr Bockstein at DLI, told me it had to do with old magical numerals. I never bothered to press him nor any subsequent instructor further on the matter and it has haunted me since.

Any help out there? Was Doc Bok BSing me?

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 4:25 am
by anders
My Russian doesn’t even qualify for taking 1st uni semester Russian, but the way I understand it is that сорок is derived from, or can at least can be compared to, Greek σαράκοντα < Old Greek τεσσαράкоντα. So, no magic.

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 8:46 am
by Spiff
That sounds good, Anders. I vaguely remember an explanation that says that 'sorok' comes from an old Russian word that was used in the market place and referred to a package of something, but that could very well be a folk etymology. I'll see if I can dig up more details, but don't hold your breath.

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 12:17 pm
by frank
Hi,

Some further information (and an elaboration on the indeed (Byzantian) Greek origin, as Anders wrote) can be obtained from this site.

F

Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 11:57 pm
by Sparg
Thanks, all, for the fine replies, especially for the one Russian page. As my Russian brethren would say, "Bolshoje spasibo!"

Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 7:23 am
by tcward
Wouldn't they have said "Большое спасибо"? ;)

-Tim

Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 9:01 am
by Spiff
I like your accent, Tim.

Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 11:11 pm
by Brazilian dude
No, I have an accent: Большóе спасибо".

Brazilian dude

Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 2:16 am
by Sparg
How do you get the Cyrillic to come out on this web stuff? I'm used to my KOI keyboard. I wrote it and it came out as:

Большое спасибо!

Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 2:19 am
by Sparg
I guess it just looked funny in the message body box. Пока!

Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 11:22 am
by Brazilian dude
I wrote it and it came out as:

Большое спасибо!
Why? Wasn't it supposed to come out this way?

Brazilian dude

Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 12:02 pm
by anders
Why? Wasn't it supposed to come out this way?
Brazilian dude
Yes, but as you must have noticed by now, on preview, all interesting characters/letters turn up as &blabla codes.