05-17-2008, 08:20 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-17-2008, 08:27 AM by Bharatvarsh.)
I have a question about numbers in Hindi and other non southern languages, I was wondering if Old Hindi or Prakrit numbers were like Telugu or Tamil because I noticed that Sanskrit is closer to southern languages in this regard.
Example:
14 = padhnaalugu (padhi = 10, naalugu = 4) in Telugu
19 = navadasa (nava = 9, dasa = 10) in Sanskrit, well the order is reversed because Telugu would put 10 before 9 and say panthommidi (padhi = 10, thommidi = 9).
19 = unnees in Hindi, a totally new word.
Now I was wondering when this clumsy (from the standpoint of remembering, its much more harder to remember all these diff words for each diff number) change took place, were the Prakrits already like this or Hindi numbers continued to be like Sanskrit or Telugu until the medieval period (so 19 would have then been naudas or even better dasnau instead of unnees) and changed recently, say like 400 years ago to take their modern form.
Example:
14 = padhnaalugu (padhi = 10, naalugu = 4) in Telugu
19 = navadasa (nava = 9, dasa = 10) in Sanskrit, well the order is reversed because Telugu would put 10 before 9 and say panthommidi (padhi = 10, thommidi = 9).
19 = unnees in Hindi, a totally new word.
Now I was wondering when this clumsy (from the standpoint of remembering, its much more harder to remember all these diff words for each diff number) change took place, were the Prakrits already like this or Hindi numbers continued to be like Sanskrit or Telugu until the medieval period (so 19 would have then been naudas or even better dasnau instead of unnees) and changed recently, say like 400 years ago to take their modern form.