North, South, East, West (Re: Use of Opposites)
Danny Wier
Robert J. Petry wrote:
>This has sparked my curiosity about how others handle opposites
>in their language. In English words like:
>up -- down
>left -- right
>hot -- cold
>north -- south,
First of all, some trivia: on old Indian maps, up is not north, but
east! So if you went "up" on a map from Madras, you wouldn't be heading
for Calcutta; you'd be getting wet.
We all know that the sun travels (in relative position to the earth)
from the east to the west. So some ideas for the word for "east" would
be "sunward" and "toward the day" and "west" would be "away from sun" or
"toward the night" If you were facing east, then north would be on your
left and south on your right, so maybe "north" could be derived from
"left hand" and "south" from "right hand". That would seem more
natural.
Danny
Jack Durst
On Wed, 21 Jan 1998, Danny Wier wrote:
> First of all, some trivia: on old Indian maps, up is not north, but
> east! So if you went "up" on a map from Madras, you wouldn't be heading
> for Calcutta; you'd be getting wet.
> We all know that the sun travels (in relative position to the earth)
> from the east to the west. So some ideas for the word for "east" would
> be "sunward" and "toward the day" and "west" would be "away from sun" or
> "toward the night" If you were facing east, then north would be on your
> left and south on your right, so maybe "north" could be derived from
> "left hand" and "south" from "right hand". That would seem more
> natural.
e
magnetic poles shifted during the language's development, so they
developed a set of planet independant directions:
=09=E7ar - poleward (Magnetic S in the northern hemisphere, Magnetic N
=09=09=09in the southern(if one keeps Austrailia in the S)
=09in=E7=E0r - antipoleward, equatorward (opposite direction of =E7ar)
=09triar - spinward (True east)
=09ind=ECar - counterspinward (opposite direction of triar)
Of course it isn't perfect, at the pole all directeions are in=E7=E0r, etc.
Sincerely,
=09Jack Durst
Sp...@sierra.net
[this posting written in Net English]
JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON
On Wed, 21 Jan 1998, Danny Wier wrote:
>
> We all know that the sun travels (in relative position to the earth)
> from the east to the west. So some ideas for the word for "east" would
> be "sunward" and "toward the day" and "west" would be "away from sun" or
> "toward the night"
Tokana does this. To travel to the east is "apanai ahona", "to go with
the sun", and to travel to the west is "kasuanai ahona", "to go against the
sun".
The Tokana have words for the four directions (as well as left and right),
but these are rarely used. Instead, the Tokana tend to orient themselves
according to the nearest river or shoreline.
Matt.
Mark P. Line
JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:
>
> Tokana does this. To travel to the east is "apanai ahona", "to go with
> the sun", and to travel to the west is "kasuanai ahona", "to go against
> the sun".
The other way around, right?
-- Mark
(Mark P. Line -- Bellevue, Washington -- <ml...@ix.netcom.com>)
JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON
On Thu, 22 Jan 1998, Mark P. Line wrote:
> JOEL MATTHEW PEARSON wrote:
> >
> > Tokana does this. To travel to the east is "apanai ahona", "to go with
> > the sun", and to travel to the west is "kasuanai ahona", "to go against
> > the sun".
>
> The other way around, right?
Oops! Dissertation-induced senility rears its ugly head.
Matt.
Don Blaheta
Quoth Raymond A. Brown:
> And I think the sinister meaning that "sinister", which in Latin simply
> means 'left(hand)', come about not so much because left-handed people were
> regarded with any suspicion but because the north (in the northern
> hemisphere) is the region of darkness where there be dragons & other
> horrors.
Well, supposedly it came from the fact that left-handed people could
more easily conceal weapons--the guard would shake your hand, your
right hand, to dislodge a concealed dagger, but if you had it in your
left sleeve it wouldn't fall out. *NOTE* this could well be a folk
etymology, but I believe I've heard it in multiple places.
--
-=-Don Blaheta-=-=-d...@cs.brown.edu-=-=-<http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/>-=-
It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.
John Cowan
Mattathias Pearson scripsit:
> > Suggestion: It would be cool if "apanai ahona" meant indifferently
> > to travel west or to move deosil, and "kasuanai ahona" meant to
> > travel east or to move widdershins. (The Tokana are in the Northern
> > Hemisphere IIRC.)
>
> Sorry, but I have no idea what "deosil" and "widdershins" mean, and my
> dictionary doesn't list them. Please gloss! :-)
Oh, thought we'd talked about this before. Deosil is the way the
sun moves, i.e. clockwise; widdershins is the opposite. Lots of
cultures recognize these circular directions as important; I tried
to get movement words into Lojban for them without success.
--
John Cowan co...@ccil.org
e'osai ko sarji la lojban.
John Cowan
> I recently ran across the words 'deosil' and 'widdershins' in a fantasy
> novel I read (_Attila's Treasure_, by Stephen Grundy--based on the
> legend of Walther and Hagen). I finally figured out what they meant, but
> I still don't know how to pronounce 'deosil'. Can you help?
['de SIl]: it's Gaelic, but whether Irish or Scottish or both I don't know.
Widdershins (aka "withershins") is native, though; OE "widersyne".
I'm surprised that any decent dictionary (I have a 1979 RHD) would lack
this one, but evidently lots do.