All words / Numbers / three 三
three · 5 etymological groups
“three” in 35 languages Numbers are rarely borrowed, so they draw the cleanest map of language families. East Asia is the exception: Chinese numerals entered Japanese, Korean and Thai.
Indo-European19 languages Germanic
English three German drei Dutch drie Swedish tre Icelandic þrír
Italic
Latin trēs French trois Spanish tres Italian tre Portuguese três Romanian trei
Slavic
Russian три tri Polish trzy
Celtic
Irish trí Welsh tri
Indo-Iranian
Persian سه se Hindi तीन tīn
Uralic Finnish kolme Estonian kolm Hungarian három
Afroasiatic Arabic ثلاثة thalātha Hebrew שָׁלוֹשׁ shalosh
Sino-Tibetan Mandarin 三 sān
Japonic Japanese 三 san native: mittsu
Koreanic Korean 삼 sam native: 셋 set
Austroasiatic Vietnamese ba Sino-Vietnamese: tam
Austronesian Indonesian tiga Filipino tatlo Hawaiian kolu
Niger–Congo Swahilinote tatu
Language isolates Basque hiru
The words and etymologies here were compiled by an AI (Claude) from its trained knowledge and have not been reviewed by a specialist. Items with a source have been checked against that source; anything without one may contain errors.
Spotted a mistake? Let us know at ateliercat24@gmail.com .
Forms marked * (such as *ḱwṓ) are reconstructed: no record of them survives, and they are rebuilt by comparing their descendants. Dog, water, mother, moon and three are on the Swadesh list, the basic vocabulary used in comparative linguistics. Cat and tea are here as words that travelled along with the thing they name.
Sources are linked, not reproduced. Wiktionary content is available under CC BY-SA; WALS Online under CC BY.
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