"six" in seven languages
Meaningsix
Spanish
seis
/seis/
inherited
French
six
/sis/
inherited
Said [si] before a consonant and [siz] before a vowel.
Italian
sei
/sɛi/
inherited
Portuguese
seis
/sejs/
inherited
Brazilians often say meia ('half a dozen') for six when reading out numbers.
Romanian
șase
/ˈʃase/
inherited
Catalan
sis
/sis/
inherited
English
six
/sɪks/
Indo-European kin · PIE *swéḱs
English → ItaliansixseiDistant cognateRelated only through Indo-European, thousands of years back (night ~ noche). But English has relatives: sextet, sexagenarian.What English and Italian share
The Latin ancestor
SEX‘six’
All six sisters descend from it, unless marked otherwise below.
The story
Latin X [ks] dissolved differently: a glide i in Spanish and Italian, an s in French.
English relatives: sextet, sexagenarian