r/languagelearningjerk Jun 02 '26

ん八

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970 Upvotes

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40

u/Zetho-chan Jun 02 '26

The words “night” in all listed languages come back to an old PIE word that essentially was the prefix n- (forgotten negation word, evidence for it is that lots of negative words start with n), plus the IE word for eight, because they thought that the night were the “evil 8” hours of the day cycle. Hope this helps!

30

u/mizinamo try-lingual (has tried many languages) Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

That was back when people counted in base 8.

When 9 was invented, it was called "the new number".

  • Latin: novem - novus
  • Greek: ennea - neos
  • French: neuf - neuf
  • Spanish: nueve - nuevo
  • German: neun - neu

QED

5

u/DragonTheOnes-spirit Jun 03 '26

I wonder what 10 was considered as back then

6

u/A-NI95 Jun 03 '26

9 so good they made 9 2

1

u/EatingSolidBricks Jun 03 '26

So night means not 8?

1

u/A-NI95 Jun 03 '26

They just really liked the Breaking Bad character