6

I myself am a native Finnish speaker and the whole numbers 10, 20 and so on translate word for word as ten, two tens etc. Why in Portuguese are these said dez and vinte. The rest make sense to me as they are some form of the numbers three, four, five...

Jacinto
  • 44,937
  • 17
  • 141
  • 257
severi
  • 61
  • 1
  • 4
    Portuguese is a romance language, so it's just because 10 in Latin is decem and 20 is viginti. Now you have to ask about the Latin etymology... – Gerardo Furtado Nov 11 '21 at 23:03
  • Severi, because Latin did it and, as Portuguese comes from Latin, we do as the Romans do. Though, you could say dezena, which is ten as a noun; for example, «três dezenas de queijo» (= «three tens of cheese»), but its use is stricter and less common than the cardinal numerals, and saying X dezenas is used usually only with things that are somehow separated in tens, as with the number system. Do you want a list for the etymology of ten, twenty, ..., and ninety, or do you want an explanation? – Schilive Nov 11 '21 at 23:11
  • 2
    I really do not understand this. In English and Portuguese no number such as 20 is said two tens. Also, do you mean etymology? – Lambie Nov 12 '21 at 14:35
  • I asked the same question regarding the variations of the "three" morpheme as we know them today. – bad_coder Nov 13 '21 at 12:28
  • 1
    If the answer addressed your question sufficiently please don't forget to upvote and accept it by clicking the green check mark on the left side of the answer. – bad_coder Nov 13 '21 at 12:30
  • If you look at German languages, "vinte" makes more sense, the inicial "t" being elided in Latin, and consequently in Portuguese. – Luís Henrique Nov 25 '21 at 17:47

1 Answers1

5

Well, if you go far, far, far, back, according to Wiktionary, vinte ultimately comes from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) dwi(h₁)dḱm̥ti, meaning ’two tens, two decades’; dwóh₁ was ’two’ (Wiktionary), and déḱm̥ ’ten’ (Wiktionary; these were reconstructed by linguists, not attested words). These eventually became viginti, duo and decem in Latin, which became vinte, dois and dez in Portuguese.

Of the similarity between PIE dwi(h₁)dḱm̥ti and dwóh₁ + déḱm̥ very little survived into Classical Latin: only the vi in viginti, pronounced as uí (listen in Wiktionary), was related to uo in duo; and viginti and decem (listen) were pronounce with hard [g] and [k], two very similar sounds (as in frango and franco), and were both heirs to the k in déḱm̥. But even that was lost in Portuguese vinte and dez.

Jacinto
  • 44,937
  • 17
  • 141
  • 257