A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages c8.45

c8.45

In some of the Finnish tongues the word for five has some slight resemblance to the neuter Dravidian numeral eid-u. The Vogul is ät; the Ostiak vet or vuet; the Magyar öt (pronounced somewhat like êt). This resemblance, however, seems purely accidental, for the final t of the Ugrian word for five appears to be radical, whereas the final d of the Dravidian noun of number eid-u is simply a neuter formative. The Chinese u may perhaps be compared with the Dravidian numeral adjective ei.