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Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British?
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: Iains Date: 10 Jun 18 - 05:01 AM It is interesting if comparing the sheep counting systems around the UK with a comparison between the celtic languages of NW Europe way of counting. It all starts to get very confusing. The sheep counting system seems to borrow from both Brythonic and Goidelic languages. I do not know if minding your P's and Q's has it's origin here but it neatly summarises the difference. " one major difference between the two branches of modern Celtic languages, Goidelic and Brythonic. Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish-Gaelic, and Manx) can also be classified as Q-Celtic, while the Brythonic languages (Breton, Welsh, and Cornish) can be labeled P-Celtic. This difference refers to a sound change whereby the Q-Celtic languages, in branching off from the other Celtic languages, replaced bilabial stops (represented by “P”) with velar stops (represented by “Q”). Hence, questions words in modern Breton such as pe, pet, penaos, peur are cognates with the Irish cé, cad, conas, and cá huair (who, what, how, when)" https://www.omniglot.com/language/numbers/celtic.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Tan_Tethera I find it very interesting but also very confusing. I need to put them all in one spreadsheet or use a second screen in order to closely compare them. There is a school of thought that a single sound shift should not divide a language. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: GUEST,John Greaves Date: 09 Jun 18 - 05:41 PM Varied forms in North York Moors area e.g. I seed ya clubster int meader but I telled nea yan. I still use twea to mean two. I await someone to elucidate, I am not a dialect expert I just use it! |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: GUEST,henryp Date: 09 Jun 18 - 04:48 PM Nigel said; "Welsh, een die tree pedwar pimp chwech (thet's two lots of 'ch' as in the scots 'loch') sigh-th, oyth now deg. "French, urn, duh, twa (like the scots) cat-ruh sank cease sept wheat nurf deess." Although twa can represent a small number in Scots, it usually represents two. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: Raedwulf Date: 09 Jun 18 - 04:33 PM I agree Jon. And disagree, Nigel - I'm not much of a linguist (a keen amateur philologist, yes), but I have picked up a little bit. You're not making sufficient allowance for the way in which sounds morph across languages. Or perhaps you know even less than I! ;-) There's a whole thing, for example, about the way that Persian names are written & pronounced in Ancient Greek. I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to explain the technicalities, but take the well known name Xerxes. That's the Greek version. In modern English, it's generally spelt something along the lines of Khshayarsha. Which is a bit of a mouthful! ;-) The point is that the Greeks couldn't necessarily wrap their tongues around, and didn't have the letters to represent, some of the sounds that were part of the Persian language, so they said / wrote it as near as they could. Consider your own (I think it was you) explanation some years back & above of how to pronounce 'll'. To a born Welsh speaker, you don't even think about it, to a non-Welsh speaker... Some sounds are very malleable across tongues, especially related tongues, vowels particularly. 'Ah' doesn't become 'oo', but I can still see a relation between the phonetic Welsh you've given & the French. Many consonantal sounds also easily morph. B & P, D & T, T & Z (perhaps surprisingly, but consider the 'ts' of tsar), V & W, M & N, and many etceteras. I think it has something to do with where the sound is shaped in the mouth (I'm sure you understand what I mean). I know only a little of linguistics but even with your phonetic renderings, yes, I can still see some quite close similarities in pronunciation. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: Will Fly Date: 09 Jun 18 - 11:54 AM Deuce. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: BobL Date: 09 Jun 18 - 02:22 AM I know a body-parts song that starts "Touch her on the toe...", although I don't think it has anything to do with counting... Re. Mrrzy's post of 10:20 yesterday, we have two, twain, couple, pair, brace, duo. Not to mention related words like twice or duet. Any more? |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: GUEST,Ripov Date: 08 Jun 18 - 07:09 PM Thanks Monique. Nice bit of bedtime reading! The concept of counting by using a list of body parts in the right order made me wonder if the children's song "with my hand on my head......when I went to school" might have deeper roots than it seems?- or even the actions to the "Shepherds Hay", maybe originally mimicking shepherds counting by touching body parts? |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: Monique Date: 08 Jun 18 - 06:00 PM Have a look at The Universal History of Numbers, from page 30 "What is Indo-European". |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: GUEST,Jon Date: 08 Jun 18 - 11:50 AM Raedwulf, as a kid who moved to N Wales mid primary age (to move on to Kent at about 13, and later at about 18 back to N Wales (but never learned to speak Welsh) where we learned to count (the 10 system) and in the later part of that first spell (ie to 2nd year secondary) where we learned to count in French, I'd say the 2 felt similar despite what NP says... But that's just me.... |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: Nigel Parsons Date: 08 Jun 18 - 11:40 AM And since no-one, not even Nigel, seems to have noticed, may I just point out that: the Welsh Equivalent 1 to 10: Un / dau / tri / pedwar / pump / Chwecch / saith / wyth / naw / deg sits remarkably closely with the French in pronunciation: un / deux / trois / quatre / cinq / six / sept / huit / neuf / dix. Unfortunately spelling is not always a guide to pronunciation. Welsh, een die tree pedwar pimp chwech (thet's two lots of 'ch' as in the scots 'loch') sigh-th, oyth now deg. French, urn, duh, twa (like the scots) cat-ruh sank cease sept wheat nurf deess. Not really that much similarity. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: Raedwulf Date: 08 Jun 18 - 10:58 AM And since no-one, not even Nigel, seems to have noticed, may I just point out that: the Welsh Equivalent 1 to 10: Un / dau / tri / pedwar / pump / Chwecch / saith / wyth / naw / deg sits remarkably closely with the French in pronunciation: un / deux / trois / quatre / cinq / six / sept / huit / neuf / dix. Reminder to them what hasn't read all the way through: u is pronounced I in Welsh so pump is pimp (ooo-err, etc). In language, d & t are strongly related i.e. two languages on the same branch may swap one for t'other, so pedwar / quatre is not very distant in sound. I'm not certain how Chwecch is pronounced, but I'm guessing not a million miles from 'swiss', albiet with a bit of 'hch' involved... which isn't a million miles from French 'six' (see-sss). The other similarities should be fairly obvious. Language family tree & all that! ;-) A thoroughly confusing family tree! I'm actually slightly surprised that the celtic branch doesn't seem to be directly linked to the Italic branch that leads to French. There is the matter of loan words, of course, but counting, to me, seems a fairly fundamental part of any language. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: FreddyHeadey Date: 08 Jun 18 - 10:20 AM Mrrzy I've heard a couple of words for two. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: Mrrzy Date: 08 Jun 18 - 10:07 AM This is fascinating. Some francophones uses septante octante nonante. I knew a Belgian who used Septante, quatre-vingts, nonante. I mean, really. Meanwhile Hungarian is the only language I've heard of (enlighten me, O do) that has two separate words for the number 2. One is only used in counting 1, 2, 3 etc. The other is used when saying 2 *of* something, like 2 Hungarians or cabbages or whatnots. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: GUEST,henryp Date: 08 Jun 18 - 07:00 AM Just for interest - some thoughts on 'three score' and 'quatre-vingts'. https://www.thelocal.fr/20160420/so-how-did-the-french-end-up-with-their-crazy-numbers Historically, there is more than one method for counting. There is the method that us Anglophones know, which comes from the Romans and is called base ten. This means that everything is based on multiples of ten. In French too, we see this, up until the seventies when, as we've said, things go weird. Then in comes the "vigesimal system" which used the base 20, hence quatre-vingt-quatre (84). This is supposedly as they used their feet as well as their hands to count. Fingers and toes included, you get twenty. Many believe it ended up in French due to the influence of the Celts in France, whose languages use the base 20 system. While others say it was the Viking influence and point to the fact that Danish numbers also works on the base 20 "vigesimal system". One good example of this is the Paris hospital called “l'Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts” (The Hospital of fifteen-twenty). The hospital was so named because it housed 300 beds and 300 is 15 times 20. And criticize as we might, the idea of counting in twenties actually used to be part of the English language too. Think back to Abraham Lincoln's famous Gettysburg address and you may remember how without realizing, we know ‘score' to mean twenty: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty…” To translate, ‘Four score and seven', means four, twenty and seven, in other words, 4x20 and 7; on exactly the same principle as the French! |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: David Carter (UK) Date: 08 Jun 18 - 02:43 AM Thanks Joe. So the phrase "threescore and ten" is Wyclif's, or otherwise it was in use earlier than his Bible. So I was wrong to cast doubt that it was an English phrase. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: Joe Offer Date: 08 Jun 18 - 12:58 AM Here's the Vulgate, in which it's Psalm 89:10:
-Joe, 70 (almost)- |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: David Carter (UK) Date: 07 Jun 18 - 02:35 AM What does it say in the Latin Vulgate then? I don't have a copy and I don't read Latin. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: GUEST,henryp Date: 06 Jun 18 - 06:00 PM What is the oldest record of 'three score' that you have found? If the earliest record of 'three score' is by Wycliffe in 1388, in a translation from the Latin Vulgate, then that suggests it is not a direct translation from the Hebrew. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: David Carter (UK) Date: 06 Jun 18 - 05:00 PM Sure, but there is older stuff than Vulgate about. Such as Codex Vaticanus, although that is Greek not Hebrew. And Septuagint, and Peshitta. But I am not sure that there are extant Hebrew versions of the Old Testament from earlier. So I am not sure whether Threescore and Ten is a translation of an original Hebrew phrase, or of Vulgate, or whether Wyclif made it up. The problem is that churches get to be theologically possessive about translations. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: GUEST,henryp Date: 06 Jun 18 - 03:30 PM From The Phrase Finder; Threescore goes back to at least 1388, as in this from John Wyclif's Bible, Leviticus 12, at that date: "Thre scoor and sixe daies." From Wikipedia; The text translated in the various versions of the Wycliffe Bible was the Latin Vulgate. Psalm 90:10-12 King James Version (KJV); The days of our years are threescore years and ten From Wikipedia; The King James Version (KJV), also known as the Authorized Version (AV), is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, begun in 1604 and completed in 1611. Like Tyndale's translation and the Geneva Bible, the Authorized Version was translated primarily from Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts, although with secondary reference both to the Latin Vulgate, and to more recent scholarly Latin versions; two books of the Apocrypha were translated from a Latin source. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: David Carter (UK) Date: 06 Jun 18 - 02:43 PM I am trying to work out whether the biblical three score and 10 is a literal translation, but am stymied by search engines throwing up vast strings of sites which seem to regard the King James version as the original. Does anyone know what it says in Hebrew? Or even whether the psalms were originally in Hebrew or some earlier semitic language? |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: Nigel Parsons Date: 06 Jun 18 - 11:31 AM English also uses base 20 numbers: Five and twenty Ponies, The ball of Kerrymuir The Bible: the years of a man are three-score years and ten etcetera. |
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Subject: Folklore: Shepherds' counting systems: British? From: Nigel Parsons Date: 06 Jun 18 - 10:59 AM Refresh |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british only???? From: GUEST,thurg Date: 12 Dec 06 - 09:17 PM Here's a sight concerned with sheep-counting: http://www.slaidburn.org.uk/counting_sheep.htm ... You're welcome! |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Nigel Parsons Date: 12 Dec 06 - 12:52 PM Refresh* |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: GUEST,Penny S. (elsewhere) Date: 11 Apr 03 - 07:21 AM Have just refreshed this to reconstitute my totally vanished literacy worksheet on counting and counting out rhymes, and noticed that nobody had answered the 20 = score part of the system. A flock of sheep has many ewes, lambs etc, too many to tally individually, so, the rhymes are used up to 20, then the mark is made on a stick. Each tally mark stands for 20. The mark, or cut, is also known as a score - think of scoring card to fold it cleanly, so the score = cut becomes score = 20. To find the total number of sheep, count the tally marks, multiply by 20, and add the odd ones left over at the end. You can do the stick splitting bit if you are rendering accounts, as well. Scoring becomes a synonym for a recorded count, hence is used for game results and so on. Penny |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: rich-joy Date: 29 Jun 02 - 02:07 AM keep trying, greg!!! (I'd like to know too) |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Steve Parkes Date: 28 Jun 02 - 11:41 AM Oops--cut off in me prime! I was going to add: does anyone know the derivation of the "ze" bit? Steve |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Steve Parkes Date: 28 Jun 02 - 11:38 AM But the french system clearly follows a similar pattern to the English: un-ze, deux-ze, trois-ze, etc. |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: greg stephens Date: 28 Jun 02 - 04:57 AM yes, but do they have sheep-counting rhymes? |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Nigel Parsons Date: 28 Jun 02 - 04:51 AM Having just received the details for naxt year's UK 'Filk' convention Quinze I am reminded that the French count up to 16 using single word numbers 1Un 2deux 3trois 4quatre 5cinq 6six 7sept 8huit 9neuf 10dix 11onze 12douze 13treize 14quatorze 15quinze 16seize This seems even more strange as they clearly use base 10 for numbers above 16 17dix-sept 18dix-huit 19dix-neuf |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Nigel Parsons Date: 11 Jun 02 - 12:46 PM BanjoRay: I defer to one who has Cymraeg as his 'mother tongue' Nigel |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: BanjoRay Date: 11 Jun 02 - 11:18 AM As a guy who's only language was Welsh until he was five, here's my take on it. To pronounce LL, touch the roof of your mouth just behind the front teeth and exhale without using the vocal chords. If you use the vocal chords, it becomes L. So to say Llanfair, you don't start using the vocal chords till you get to the first a Get practicing! |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Nigel Parsons Date: 11 Jun 02 - 07:27 AM Mr Red: The Ll is pronounced by moving the tongue to the roof of the mouth, leaving only a small gap above it, then exhaling so that most of the air passes under the tongue, with a small amount getting in above the tongue. The tungue is then brought down to touch the front lower teeth while pronouncing a 'soft' 'L'. This is probably documented somewhere, but I have just been typing this while repeatedly naming that place on Anglesey, and analysing my mouth movements. Mr Happy: The Dutch (o.k. the Netherlanders, I know 'Dutch' only covers part of their country) give a confusing telling of the time. They avoid saying the equivalent of "before" or "after" when stating the half hours, But When they say their equivalent of "Half Twelve" you need to remember that they mean "Half to Twelve" i.e. Half Eleven to us. Their 'ten tos' and 'ten pasts' match ours (to = 'voor'; past = achter or over) but the also use the half hour as a standard, so it is not unknown to hear the time given as "tien voor half twelf" i.e. 10 before Half Twelve. i.e. 11.20. Similarly 'Tien over half twelf' would be 11.40 Apologies to any Nederlands speakers for misspellings. Migel |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Mr Happy Date: 11 Jun 02 - 07:16 AM could be 'cheddar' is 'chether?' or 'llether?' if not- hard cheese |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: sian, west wales Date: 11 Jun 02 - 07:12 AM Nigel, longer, and more comprehensive! Mr. Red: LL is as described (as much as it can be described) so presumably you're been pronouncing Llanfair PG correctly,at least in this regard; CH is as in the German, ie, "Bach". What's with the Cheddar reference? (Tho' not to encourage thread drift) sian
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: GUEST,Pavane Date: 11 Jun 02 - 07:09 AM Ll is NOT ch, whatever else it may be. The Welsh do have ch, similar to Scots. The origin of the name Floyd may be mispronounced Lloyd? As I am English (Londoner), and not a Welsh speaker at all, I am not the best person to comment on all the Welsh numbers. However, it is also possible that other branches of Brythonic Celtic did use numbers differently. I remember reading somewhere that Hickory Dickory Dock was Druidic for 8,9,10. How on earth anyone would know is a mystery to me, and no historical reference was given.
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Mr Red Date: 11 Jun 02 - 06:46 AM And I always thought Ll was pronounced (via a diversion of air into the cheeks a la Winston Churchill) ch Hence how Cheddar got its anglisised name. Have I been pronouncing Llanfair PG wrong all this time? Ok OK that's easy for you to say! |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Mr Happy Date: 11 Jun 02 - 05:43 AM more confusing systems exist in germany. when i was there, it was explained that when telling the time, it's usual to say something like, 'it's ten minutes past half past three' when they mean twenty to four. comments? |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Steve Parkes Date: 11 Jun 02 - 05:30 AM And the French have quatre vingts dix = four score and ten. "Eleven" means "one left [after ten]", and twelve "two left". I remember "eighteen pence" was common for "one and six" (but not "nineteen pence"); I still say "fifty bob" [fifty shillings, or two pounds ten shillings] for two pounds fifty; it used to be common to quote prices in shillings instead of (one or two) pounds. And while there's sense in having twelve pence in a shilling or sixteen ounces in a pound, how about fourteen pounds in a stone, or twenty-eight pounds in a quarter? Some of the weird multiples in UK weights and measures are due to two or more independent systems being "unified" in past centuries. Sorry to shed more darkeness on the subject! Steve |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Nigel Parsons Date: 11 Jun 02 - 04:33 AM Sian: you beat me to it whilst I was typing a longer screed. Nigel |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Nigel Parsons Date: 11 Jun 02 - 04:32 AM Mr Happy: you have been correctly informed, as with the above explanations, just as twenty is considered a basic number, so is fifteen. (possibly because of the divisions on clocks) so 'saith ar bymtheg' woud be the same as 'dau ar hugain' (2+20). The putting of the smaller unit first is not unknown in English either. "Five and twenty ponies" (Kipling); "Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie" etc. The counting by scores (20s) continues in Welsh. Ugain(or hugain) is twenty, Deugain (two 20s) is forty; trigain (three 20s) or Chwe deg (six 10s), Pedwar ugain is eighty If you want to fully confuse the counting system, you need to come up with weird ways of describing numbers without using base 5 or base 10. Eighteen is sometimes given as Deunaw (two 9s). In the pre-decimal currency days, this was a common term for One shilling & sixpence (i.e. one and a half shillings, eighteen pence). Also known as Swllt a Chwech (shilling and six) |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: sian, west wales Date: 11 Jun 02 - 04:29 AM There wouldn't be a "saith ar bymtheg" as it changes when you get to twenty (ugain, or dau ddeg). And although tri ar bymtheg (18) is correct, I've never heard it used; it's usually either the 'new' fashion of "un deg wyth" or the (what I've always thought of as..) 'old style' "deunaw" (two nines). sian |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Mr Happy Date: 11 Jun 02 - 03:23 AM pavane, if you know about welsh language & counting, can you explain 'saith ar' y bymtheg' as a whole number i heard it means something like 7 + 15=22 why would they use n+n=product, if there's already a named number for the same thing? (or am i up a gumtree?)
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Steve Parkes Date: 11 Jun 02 - 03:22 AM Arthur Haynes: Hlepherd's Bush! Nicholas Parsons: There is no "L" in Sheperd's Bush! Arthur Haynes: You wnat to try living there! Sorry! A memory came flooding back to me just then ... Steve |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Steve Parkes Date: 11 Jun 02 - 03:19 AM Hlandidno, surely? |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: GUEST,pavane Date: 11 Jun 02 - 02:50 AM Just to explain, in Welsh, the letter u is usually pronounced as i, so pump (5) is pronounced PIMP. (and Llandudno is pronounced Llandidno) |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: GUEST,pavane Date: 11 Jun 02 - 02:46 AM |
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: Steve Parkes Date: 10 Jun 02 - 10:57 AM "Score" means a mark on a stick. Folks would make notches on a stick called a tally for accounts and the like; they'd cut the stick in two lengthways, and each would keep one half. If either tried to alter his copy, it would no longer tally with the other, so it was a fraud-free method. Can't quite remember the "score=20" thing, but it was literally the case--but probably nothing to do with tallies. I've always wondered why shepherds couldn't just go "one-two-three..." (in whatever language they spoke) like everybody else. Wasi it to keep fom falling asleep? And what sort of size limit would there be on a flock? I guess no-one would have thousands, but hundreds may have been a possiblility, especially if they were communal herds (i.e. everyone's small flock, duly marked, kept on the same grazing).
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Subject: RE: Shepherds Counting Systems : british onl From: rich-joy Date: 10 Jun 02 - 06:14 AM Thanks LJC for that great link - I DID read that one!!! Liland - I did try to explain at the beginning of the thread that my question marks got left off the "british only" part of the name : haven't got used to the allowable length of the thread names!!! I should first count the characters on some others, I guess ... Thanks to all contributers so far - I appreciate it. Cheers! R-J |
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