Re: Missing the sky

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002 15:02:51 +0100 Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> writes:
> Well, in this case having a conculture with your conlang helps a
> lot. Some
> cultures consider the sky to be a kind of lid or cover or roof above
> earth, and
> thus call it that way (or a derivative). Some just have a god of the
> sky and
> name the sky itself after the god. Some separate day sky and night
> sky (like
> supposedly the Proto-Indo-Europeans did) and have different terms
> for both.
> What's important in this case is not what the sky *is*, but what the
> speakers of the language *consider* it to be.
> Christophe.
-

Rokbeigalmki actually went sort of backwards when it comes to that...
the word for "sky" is _maro_, and the word for "star" is _gamnuh_, both
native R. words, but the word for "dome" is _eleni_, a borrowing from
Proto-Elven, where it meant "stars".  The word went from meaning "stars"
to "stars (collective)" to "night sky dome of stars" to "dome of heaven"
to just plain any kind of "dome".


-Stephen (Steg)
"You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment
  that you touch perfect speed.  And that isn't flying a thousand
  miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light.
  Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have
  limits.  Perfect speed, my son, is being there."
                    ~ _jonathan livingston seagull_ by richard bach