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Re: Missing the sky

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Thursday, March 7, 2002, 10:42
En réponse à Muke Tever <alrivera@...>:

> [I hope yall'll forgive that all these replies are together.. I can > only > respond through this clunky webmail interface and not Outlook Express > anymore.. stupid mail servers.] >
Different experience here :)) . I would never read the list through Outlook Express (really awful) and my webmail interface works very well :)) .
> > But it is a very strange thing--it cannot be heard or touched or smelled > or > tasted, and its appearance is quite... inconstant? It is possible that > the > day's blue sky might be seen as a thing by the Rami, but I am not sure > that > any other state might be. Words for spaces.. Words for any spaces at > all > might be difficult Rami concepts. >
How would you translate "landscape" in Rami then? Because it has the same caracteristics as sky (inconstancy, cannot be touched, etc...). Yet a landscape is something pretty real! :))
> > > Some just have a god of the sky and name the sky itself after the > god. > > Well, the Rami have been traditionally nontheistic. >
Well, even non-theists can have spirits and other kinds of creatures :)) .
> > Some separate day sky and night sky (like supposedly the > Proto-Indo-Europeans > > did) and have different terms for both. > > There were PIE words for different skies? >
Yep! The word *dyew- (or is it *dhyew-? I can't remember exactly) refers only to day-sky (and this word later gave "deus" in Latin: "god"). I don't know what the word for night-sky was. And though reconstruction of meanings may be a tricky thing, IEologists seem quite sure of this meaning.
> > There probably cannot be a "sky in general" word. But perhaps "sky in > general" could be achieved by a dvandva compound between the day-sky and > the > stars. >
Nice idea! Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Replies

Y.Penzev <isaacp@...>
Joe Hill <joe@...>
Muke Tever <alrivera@...>