Words under the lens: Greek Numeral names No.13 - Greek words related to number "eleven"

13.    Greek words related to number "eleven":

Greek word ENDEKA means "eleven", and ENDEKATOS (ENDEKATE, ENDEKATON) means "eleventh", [Divry's Modern English-Greek, Greek-English Dictionary, 1988, p. 762, also p. 498].

Turkish cardinal numeral for "eleven" is 
"ONBIR" and for ordinal numeral "eleventh" is "ONBIRINCI". 

a)   Greek word ENDEKA, meaning "eleven", rearranged as
 "EN-DEK-A" is the altered and restructured form of the Turkish expression  "ON TEK O" (ONBIR O) meaning "it is eleven". In this "Greek" numeral name, the Turkish numeral name "BIR", meaning "one", has been replaced with the Turkish word TEK meaning "one; single". Of course, the resulting Turkish phrase still means "eleven", although "ON TEK" (ONTEK) is not used in Turkish in place of the cardinal numeral name ONBIR. In this anagram, we note that the Greek term DEKA, meaning "ten", has gotten its meaning from Turkish word ON, meaning "ten", and its verbal form from Turkish "TEKO" (> DEKA), while the Greek term EN, meaning "one", has got its meaning from Turkish word  TEK (BIR), meaning "one, single", while getting its verbal form from Turkish "ON" (> EN, ÖN).  Thus, there has been a cross-assignment of the meanings of Turkish numerals and a cross-naming of the parts of the word ENDEKA.

b)    Similarly, the Greek word ENDEKATOS (also ENDAKATON) means "eleventh", [Divry's Modern English-Greek, Greek-English Dictionary, 1988, p. 498].

While words EN and DEKA are as explained above, the Greek word ENDEKATOS, has one more inherent capability of decipherment in Turkish. That is, when it is rearranged letter-by-letter as "ONTEKSEDA" or "TEK-ONSEDA", it is the restructured form of the Turkish expression 
"ONTEKCIDI" or "TEK-ONCIDI", both being another altered and shortened form of the Turkish ordinal numeral "ONBIRINCIDI" meaning "it is the eleventh". I also note that if the Greek ordinal numeral name was ENENDEKATOS rather than ENDEKATOS, then, its decipherment into Turkish would be ONTEKINCIDI. This would be an exact correspondence to Turkish word ONBIRINCIDI. But, the Greek linguists, being expert anagrammatizers of the Turkish language, had the total free hand to do as they pleased with the Turkish linguistic source texts that they reshaped in order to come up with words for a newly manufactured language of "Greek". 


Polat Kaya

29/05/2011