# Six



## rushalaim

All Slav-languages and Lithuanian name the number _"six"_ as [*sh*e*s*(sh)*t*].
It's very similar to Hebrew _"*sh*e*sh*e*t*"_ (ששת). Why?
A: Why only the Slavic-number _"six"_ is similar to Hebrew? Couldn't Slavs invent the number's name themselves?
B: Or it shows the common origin of languages?
C: Why only Slavs have the same similarity with Hebrew for _"six"_?


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## rbrunner

I found this blog entry which votes for this similarity as "only coincidence":
http://www.balashon.com/2006/05/shesh.html


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## ahvalj

That's coincidence: moreover, even the initial _š_ in Lithuanian (_šeši_) and Slavic (Old Church Slavonic _šestĭ_) are secondarily identical. The Proto-Indo-European word for _6_ is usually reconstructed as *_sekʲs_ or *_su̯ekʲs_. It appears that in Balto-Slavic the beginning of the word has received a non-etymological _k_ (a non-palatalized one, unlike _kʲ_ before the final _s_), so that this word began to sound something like *_ksekʲs_. Then, the development was regular:

(1) _s_ after _k_ became assibilated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruki_sound_law) and the entire group developed in the following way: *_ks_>*_kṣ_>*_š_ — this _š_ has preserved in Lithuanian (_šeši_), has simplified into _s_ in Latvian (_seši_) and developed into *_x_ in Slavic (compare, e. g., the similar development in the word for "top": PIE *_u̯r̥sus_ > Balto-Slavic *_u̯irṣus_ > Lithuanian _viršus_, Latvian _virs_ ["above"], Old East Slavic _vĭrxŭ_); during the first Slavic palatalization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_first_palatalization) this *_x_ reverted back to _š_ (_šestĭ_);

(2) the group *_kʲs_ underwent satemization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centum–satem_isogloss#The_Satem_concept) and *_kʲ_ produced _š_ in Lithuanian and _s_ in Latvian and Slavic, whereas the following _s_ merged with either sound (compare, e. g. the similar development in the word for "axis": PIE *_hₐekʲsis _> Post-PIE *_akʲsis _> Lithuanian _ašis_, Latvian _ass_, Old Church Slavonic _osĭ_);

(3) since the PIE word was indeclinable, both Baltic and Slavic regularized it by adding a suffix — in Baltic, this _šeš_- (Lithuanian) / *_ses_- (Latvian) has been treated as an adjective and extended with *_-ı̯a-_ in the masculine and *-_ı̯ā_- in the feminine, with the following development in the Nominative Plural masculine: Lithuanian *_šešı̯āı̯_>*_šešʲāı̯_>*_šešiē_>_šeši_ and Latvian *_sesı̯āı̯_>*_sešāı̯>*sešiē_>_seši _(the first _ı̯_ assimilated to the previous consonant producing a palatalized _šʲ_ in Lithuanian and a _š_ in Latvian; the acute ending shortened in Lithuanian; the final diphthong contracted in Latvian); in Slavic the development was different: the ordinal numeral *_ksekʲstos_ "sixth" (>_šestŭ_) served as the base of a new cardinal numeral *_ksekʲstis_>_šestĭ_ "six" (compare also *_penkʷtos_>_pętŭ_ "fifth" and *_penkʷtis_>_pętĭ_ "five" or *_sebdmos_>_sedmŭ_ "seventh" and *_sebdmis_>_sedmĭ_ "seven").


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> It's very similar to Hebrew _"*sh*e*sh*e*t*"_ (ששת). Why?


The Hebrew word for six is שש and not ששת. The ת- is a declensional ending (masculine status constructus) and not part of the stem. The Proto-Semitic root is probably S-T (compare Arabic _sitta_ and Aramaic _shet_ (masculine _shita_)).


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> The Hebrew word for six is שש and not ששת. The ת- is a declensional ending (masculine status constructus) and not part of the stem. The Proto-Semitic root is probably S-T (compare Arabic _sitta_ and Aramaic _shet_ (masculine _shita_)).


Hebrew ששה becomes  ששת
By the way, Russian Ш-letter is Hebrew ש ?


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## origumi

berndf said:


> The Proto-Semitic root is probably S-T (compare Arabic _sitta_ and Aramaic _shet_ (masculine _shita_)).


So wouldn't the proto root be SH-TH?


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## berndf

origumi said:


> So wouldn't the proto root be SH-TH?


1) By "S" I mean the phoneme S1 (aka š), however it was pronounced. I find the newer theory S1=s more convincing than S1=sh, but that is just my personal opinion. If you think of S1=sh as 19th century orientalists believed, that's fine. Doesn't really matter here.
2) You mean because of Aramaic? Hebrew_ sh _/ Aramaic _t_ is indeed normally a sign of original _th_. But how do you explain Arabic _t_ rather than _th_?


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## Ihsiin

Akkadian also had six as _šiššu_. Do we think that the Arabic could have been taken from Aramaic?


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## berndf

Good point. I don't know.


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## rushalaim

Me, asking _"Why only Slavs have the same similarity with Hebrew for "six", _meant that Why in Europe only Slavs have such a similarity _"six"_-word with Hebrew?
I think Arabic didn't derive from Aramaic, but from Aramaic + different tribes dialects' mixture.
What root for numerical? Do you really think numbers have any roots?


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## origumi

I think that an accepted reconstruction for the Protoc-Semitic 6 is SH-D-TH, as mentioned for example here. The D was lost in Hebrew, contributed to the -tt in Arabic, etc.

In regard to pronunciation of s1 - my guess is that during the Hebrew merger of th -> s1, the sound of s1 was closer to "th" than "sh" is, and yet it wasn't necessarily "s". But this is later than proto-Semitic.


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> What root for numerical? Do you really think numbers have any roots?


That's what we have been discussing. Within the individual groups: PIE _*sweḱs_ or _*seḱs_; PS _*S-D-TH_ or _*Sh-D-Th _(taking into account what Origumi wrote above). This shows the the similarity between Slavic and Hebrew is accidental (knowing that The ת- is just an ending and not part of the root makes the similarity less impressive anyway). If there is a common root of PIE and PS numerals? Who knows. Some linguists think yes, but most think we know too little to even attempt a reconstruction of a common root of Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic languages.



origumi said:


> In regard to pronunciation of s1 - my guess is that during the Hebrew merger of th -> s1, the sound of s1 was closer to "th" than "sh" is, and yet it wasn't necessarily "s". But this is later than proto-Semitic.


It certainly makes S1=Sh only a remote possibility. If we accept that S3 was originally an affricate [ts], which if I am not mistaken is now all but consensus view, then S1=s is the most obvious solution: This (the shift of S3 from ts to s) explains the merger of S1+S3 in Arabic and the shift of S1 to sh in languages where this merger did not take place (i.e. a push shift ts>s; s>sh, similar to Grimm's law in Germanic).


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> That's what we have been discussing. Within the individual groups: PIE _*sweḱs_ or _*seḱs_; PS _*S-D-TH_ or _*Sh-D-Th _(taking into account what Origumi wrote above). This shows the the similarity between Slavic and Hebrew is accidental (knowing that The ת- is just an ending and not part of the root makes the similarity less impressive anyway). If there is a common root of PIE and PS numerals? Who knows. Some linguists think yes, but most think we know too little to even attempt a reconstruction of a common root of Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic languages.


Above you said: _"The Hebrew word for six is שש and not ששת."_ Don't you think the root שש is like double-_Shin_ in Accadian-cuneiform for _"six"_ like ШШ?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_numerals#/media/File:Babylonian_numerals.svg


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> Above you said: _"The Hebrew word for six is שש and not ששת."_ Don't you think the root שש is like double-_Shin_ in Accadian-cuneiform for _"six"_ like ШШ?:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_numerals#/media/File:Babylonian_numerals.svg


This are Sumerian numerals (6x I, not 2x Ш), not phonetic letters. Nothing to do with the Akkadian word šeššet.


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## fdb

Stoggler said:


> Both are descended from the Phoenician letter "shin"





rushalaim said:


> Hebrew ששה becomes  ששת
> By the way, Russian Ш-letter is Hebrew ש ?



The inventors of Cyrillic script took the letter Ш directly from Hebrew. Phoenician has nothing to do with it.


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## fdb

The proto-Semitic word for “six” can be reconstructed as *_s1idϑ_. This form is actually attested (without the vowel of course) in the oldest texts in Sabaic, but in all the other Semitic languages (including later Sabaic) it has been affected by various sorts of assimilation, resulting in (for example) Arabic _sittun_ (with feminine referent) and _sittatun_ (with masculine referent); the ordinal _sādisun_ ‘sixth’ is closer to the parent language.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> The inventors of Cyrillic script took the letter Ш directly from Hebrew.


That is not quite correct. The inventors or Cyrillic took it directly from Glagolitic. The question is what Cyril and Methodius or whoever chose the letters had in mind when they defined the letter Sha. It could be from the Aramaic alphabet that is used to write Hebrew but we don't know for sure. Another surmise is that it might be from Coptic.


fdb said:


> Phoenician has nothing to do with it.


What all possibilities have in common is of course the decedence from Phoenician.


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## rushalaim

fdb said:


> The inventors of Cyrillic script took the letter Ш directly from Hebrew. Phoenician has nothing to do with it.


All European and Hebrew alphabets were derived from Phoenician.


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## fdb

All European, and most Semitic, scripts derive ultimately from Ancient North-West Semitic script, of which Phoenician and Hebrew (or rather: Aramaic) scripts are two separate developments. Greek script derives from Phoenecian and Cyrillic from Greek. Cyrillic does not derive DIRECTLY from Phoenecian.


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## fdb

berndf said:


> That is not quite correct. The inventors or Cyrillic took it directly from Glagolitic. The question is what Cyril and Methodius or whoever chose the letters had in mind when they defined the letter Sha. It could be from the Aramaic alphabet that is used to write Hebrew but we don't know for sure. Another surmise is that it might be from Coptic.



Yes, I should have said "from Glagolitic".



berndf said:


> What all possibilities have in common is of course the decedence from Phoenician.



The Coptic ϣ {š} derives from Egyptian script, not Phoenician.


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## rushalaim

fdb said:


> All European, and most Semitic, scripts derive ultimately from Ancient North-West Semitic script, of which Phoenician and Hebrew (or rather: Aramaic) scripts are separate developments. Greek script derives from Phoenecian and Cyrillic from Greek. Cyrillic does not derive DIRECTLY from Phoenecian.


A: All European and Hebrew were derived from Phoenician. 
B: Slavic alphabet from Greek? I doubt it. Slavs might live as close to modern Syria/Lebanon (Phoenicia) as Greeks lived (in the very ancient times).
C: The modern _"Hebrew"_ alphabet is not the real Jewish alphabet but from Assyria. The real ancient Jewish script is quite very similar to the Phoenician alphabet and was derived from Phoenician.


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## fdb

rushalaim said:


> A: All European and Hebrew were derived from Phoenician.



wrong (as explained above).



rushalaim said:


> B: Slavic alphabet from Greek? I doubt it. Slavs might live as close to modern Syria/Lebanon (Phoenicia) as Greeks lived (in the very ancient times).



Most of the Cyrillic letters are manifestly taken directly from Byzantine Greek.



rushalaim said:


> C: The modern _"Hebrew"_ alphabet is not the real Jewish alphabet but from Assyria. The real ancient Jewish script is quite very similar to the Phoenician alphabet and was derived from Phoenician.



Vaguely correct, if with "Assyria" you mean "Aramaic".


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## rushalaim

Assyria (Aramaic) script, I mean  עברית modern letters.
Greeks even don't have any _"sh"_-sound, they say _"s"_-sound instead. Russians have as  ש (ш, щ)-sounds, as צ (ц)-sound.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> The Coptic ϣ {š} derives from Egyptian script, not Phoenician.


You are right, of course. Demotic is the common origin of the Aramaic and Coptic letters for š, not Phoenician which itself has Demotic as one of its sources.


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## fdb

The Egyptian origin of the NW-Semitic script is a wide-spread, plausible, but as yet unproven hypothesis. But in this case the ancient Semitic script would derive from hieroglyphic, not demotic Egyptian script.


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> Assyria (Aramaic) script, I mean עברית modern letters.


Yes, those letters are Aramaic, not Assyrian.


rushalaim said:


> Greeks even don't have any "sh"-sound, they say "s"-sound instead. Russians have as ש (ш, щ)-sounds, as צ (ц)-sound.


That is why the inventors of Cyrillic had to borrow letters for sounds without correspondence in Greek from other sources; in our case from Glagolitic. The fact still remains that the bulk of the Cyrillic alphabet is taken from Byzantine Greek.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> But in this case the ancient Semitic script would derive from hieroglyphic, not demotic Egyptian script.


Why?


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## fdb

Because Demotic is not used until the 7th century BC; forms of the NW-Semitic script (e.g. Ugaritic) are known from the second millenium.


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## berndf

fdb said:


> Because Demotic is not used until the 7th century BC; forms of the NW-Semitic script (e.g. Ugaritic) are known from the second millenium.


I see. We are both guilty of terminological sloppiness. You didn't distinguish between Hieratic and Hieroglyphic and I didn't distinguish between Hieratic and Demotic. I think we both mean Hieratic.


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## rushalaim

fdb said:


> The Egyptian origin of the NW-Semitic script is a wide-spread, plausible, but as yet unproven hypothesis. But in this case the ancient Semitic script would derive from hieroglyphic, not demotic Egyptian script.


If you under _"hieroglyphic"_ script mean Proto-Sinaitic script, I do agree, that Proto-Synaitic script were derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. However ancient Jewish and Phoenician are the same script. Jews adopted Phoenician script.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Sinaitic_script


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## fdb

The proto-Sinaitic inscriptions have not yet been deciphered satisfactorily, so all these questions are really up in the air. From my reading of the literature it seems that the "the-alphabet-came-from-Egypt" school favours a derivation of proto-Sinaitic from hieroglyphic, not hieratic script. But I am still waiting for someone who can actually translate proto-Sinaitic.


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> Yes, those letters are Aramaic, not Assyrian.


Aramaic-script was written down the same as Phoenician in ancient times. After returning from the Babylonian slavery Jews changed the real ancient-script from Phoenician to Asssyrian. They began to write down as sacred texts as mundane=Aramaic with Assyrian letters, now it's  עברית letters.


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> If you under _"hieroglyphic"_ script mean Proto-Sinaitic script, I do agree, that Proto-Synaitic script were derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs. However ancient Jewish and Phoenician are the same script. Jews adopted Phoenician script.


The Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician scripts are essentially the same but they should better be regarded as twins and not as parent and child.


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> The Paleo-Hebrew and Phoenician scripts are essentially the same but they should better be regarded as twins and not as parent and child.


Who is _"mother"_, Egypt? But Egypt just have hieroglyphs for magic in their cult and Accadian cuneiforms for bookkeeping.

Jews needn't any alphabet before Egyptian-slavery, but Phoenicians invented their alphabet for trading, because they were businessmen. Apparently, Jews adopted widly-known Phoenician-alphabet when they became free of Egyptian-slavery.


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> Aramaic-script was written down the same as Phoenician in ancient times. After returning from the Babylonian slavery Jews changed the real ancient-script from Phoenician to Asssyrian. They began to write down as sacred texts as mundane=Aramaic with Assyrian letters, now it's  עברית letters.


The script is called Aramaic and *not* Assyrian. Assyrians wrote in cuneiform (example). The Babylonians, not the Assyrians, changed the writing system from cuneiform to a variety of the Aramaic alphabet, today called "Imperial Aramaic" when Aramaic replaced Akkadian as the administrative language of the empire. Both the Imperial Aramaic language and scripts were adopted by the Persians when they conquered the Babylonian empire. And the modern Hebrew alphabet is based on this Imperial Aramaic alphabet.

Maybe you confuse it with the Syriac alphabet which is sometimes called "Assyrian". But that is a different matter.


rushalaim said:


> Who is _"mother"_, Egypt?


Earlier versions of Proto-Canaanite. Remember that Phoenician and Hebrew are just "dialects" of a larger Canaanite language. The relationship between the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew alphabets is like that between Russian and Ukrainian Cyrillic: Essentially the same used for very closely related languages but with slight differences.


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> Earlier versions of Proto-Canaanite. Remember that Phoenician and Hebrew are just "dialects" of a larger Canaanite language. The relationship between the Phoenician and Paleo-Hebrew alphabets is like that between Russian and Ukrainian Cyrillic: Essentially the same used for very closely related languages but with slight differences.


The Bible describes ancestors of Europeans (Greeks, Slavs, Germans) were lived close by (among) Jews in Canaan.
And don't you think, *ש* or *ш* is the Accadian name for *אש* (_flame_) and Babylonian _sun-god_ *שמש* ?


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> The Bible describes acestors of Europeans (Greeks, Slavs, Germans) were lived close to (among) Jews.


Certainly not 1000BC. The only non-Canaanites mentioned to have lived there at that time were the Philistines. Where those people came from is in the dark.


rushalaim said:


> And don't you think, *ש* or *ш* is the Accadian name for *אש* (_flame_) and Babylonian _sun-god_ *שמש* ?


You are mixing letters and words here. I cannot follow you.


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## origumi

berndf said:


> Yes, those letters are Aramaic, not Assyrian.


For the protocol: one of the names we (Hebrews) call these letters is "Assyrian". I guess it refers to the geographic term rather than script genealogy.


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## fdb

origumi said:


> For the protocol: one of the names we (Hebrews) call these letters is "Assyrian". I guess it refers to the geographic term rather than script genealogy.



The term assyria grammata goes back at least to Herodotus and Thucydides. It seems to be an exonym rather than an endonym for "oriental script".


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> Certainly not 1000BC. The only non-Canaanites mentioned to have lived there at that time were the Philistines. Where those people came from is in the dark.


7 nations were lived in Canaan: Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites. Yet there is the mountain, which have four names: _Sion, Hermon, Sirion, Shenir(Snir)_. Don't you think, the fourth name _Shenir/Snir_ is similar to German _Schnee_ or Slavic _Sne(h)g_ because that mountain has snow on top. This the last fourth name of the mount is the Mountain's name of the Amorites-tribe. Those four names arose because the four nations who were lived near the Mount thought this Land belongs to it (one of four nations). Maybe Amorites are the ancestors of Germans, Slavs, Greeks? Who were Phoenicians: Canaanites-tribe or Amorites-tribe? It was 1300BC


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## origumi

fdb said:


> The term assyra grammata goes back at least to Herodotus and Thucydides. It seems to be an exonym rather than an endonym for "oriental script".


In the Hebrew literature, the term "Assyrian" for the script first appears in the Mishna, later than the two authors you mentioned, of course. A usual explanation (e.g. in the Hebrew Wikipedia for Aramaic Alphabet, for what it's worth) is that after the Assyrian occupation Aram became to be known as Assyria, a process like the one that gave Syria its name, and this included the alphabet name.


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## origumi

rushalaim said:


> Don't you think, the fourth name _Shenir/Snir_ is similar to German _Schnee_ or Slavic _Sne(h)g_ because that mountain has snow on top.


Rashi רש"י gives this etymology: "שניר" - הוא שלג בלשון אשכנז [שנעע] ובלשון כנען. But then... linguistics may have progressed a little in the last 1000 years.


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> The Babylonians, not the Assyrians, changed the writing system from cuneiform to a variety of the Aramaic alphabet, today called "Imperial Aramaic" when Aramaic replaced Akkadian as the administrative language of the empire. Both the Imperial Aramaic language and scripts were adopted by the Persians when they conquered the Babylonian empire. And the modern Hebrew alphabet is based on this Imperial Aramaic alphabet.


I think so called _"Imperial-Hebrew"_ is the Jewish ancient script Solomon-the king times. But Phoenician-script arose a thousand years before.


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## rushalaim

origumi said:


> Rashi רש"י gives this etymology: "שניר" - הוא שלג בלשון אשכנז [שנעע] ובלשון כנען. But then... linguistics may have progressed a little in the last 1000 years.


I guess Rashi didn't base his sayings only on linguistics.


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> I think so called _"Imperial-Hebrew"_ is the Jewish ancient script Solomon-the king times.


No.


rushalaim said:


> But Phoenician-script arose a thousand years before.


No.


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## rayloom

fdb said:


> The proto-Semitic word for “six” can be reconstructed as *_s1idϑ_. This form is actually attested (without the vowel of course) in the oldest texts in Sabaic, but in all the other Semitic languages (including later Sabaic) it has been affected by various sorts of assimilation, resulting in (for example) Arabic _sittun_ (with feminine referent) and _sittatun_ (with masculine referent); the ordinal _sādisun_ ‘sixth’ is closer to the parent language.



What would explain the final s in Arabic sādisun?


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## fdb

Assimilation to the initial consonant.


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## ahvalj

rushalaim said:


> All Slav-languages and Lithuanian name the number _"six"_ as [*sh*e*s*(sh)*t*].
> It's very similar to Hebrew _"*sh*e*sh*e*t*"_ (ששת). Why?
> A: Why only the Slavic-number _"six"_ is similar to Hebrew? Couldn't Slavs invent the number's name themselves?
> B: Or it shows the common origin of languages?
> C: Why only Slavs have the same similarity with Hebrew for _"six"_?


Just for the record, it was implied but wasn't explicitly written: East Baltic and Slavic have three phonetic variants of the word "sixth"
Lithuanian: _*š*e*š*tas_
Old Church Slavonic: _*š*e*s*tŭ_
Latvian: _*s*e*s*tais.
_
Extinct Prussian (West Baltic), however, had a completely deviant form: _uschts/wuschts/usts_.


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## rushalaim

The Land where Jews are living now, Israel, was the Land of Ham's son Canaan. There were lived seven tribes: Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites. Those six were from *Ham* (_Hamites_), Canaanites were the main-tribe. But Perizzites weren't from Ham! However Perizzites were lived in Canaan and possessed the Land.

The Land is not _"Semitic"_. Inhabitants of the Land were as Hamites as other nations equally. So called שפת כנען is not Hebrew at all, not Arabic either.


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## berndf

Yes, those are the myths of the Bible. What does that have to do with anything?

The name of the language group, Semitic, maybe inspired by the Biblical name Shem. But that's about it.


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> Yes, those are the myths of the Bible. What does that have to do with anything?
> 
> The name of the language group, Semitic, maybe inspired by the Biblical name Shem. But that's about it.


The Bible says the Land didn't belong to Jews, you cannot just throw away such a document.
I guess you cannot understand any language using just linguistics but with culture, archeology, genetics, history and of course linguistics.


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> The name of the language group, Semitic, maybe inspired by the Biblical name Shem. But that's about it.


The name *"Semitic"* is myth, conspired by scholars just 200 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> The Bible says the Land didn't belong to Jews


This is completely irrelevant for the etymology of שש.


rushalaim said:


> The name *"Semitic"* is myth


Obviously. But again completely irrelevant for what we are discussing here.


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## ahvalj

The PIE words for "six" and "sixth" are discussed, in particular, here: _Mallory JP, Adams DQ · 2006 · The Oxford introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European world:_ 313–314 (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_7IkEzr9hyJSlktVjdsV0llVHc&authuser=0). The Avestan _xšvaš_ "six" agrees well with the form reconstructed for East Baltic and Slavic (http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/six.3022417/#post-15275791) and makes the suggested *_ksekʲs _quite probable. Mallory and Adams even postulate *_ksu̯ekʲs _as original PIE as it may explain other attested forms through gradual simplifications. That's of course speculative, yet we find this *_k_- outside Balto-Slavic.


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