Re: CHAT: Directions

On Thu, 8 Jul 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

> What do you think of the ambiguities between "east" and "sky", and
> between "west" and "shadow"?  Does it seem realistic to have such an
> ambiguity?
I like it! I think it could be realistic - for instance if the terms
for directions have been derived originally from looking at the sun,
or at the weather.

> It could create interesting ambiguities in religious texts - would, for
> instance, tiglad=EDz wabiikad=EDzta mean "a ruler from the sky" or merely=
 "a
> ruler from the east"?  :-)
Especially in prophecies, of course. (write one, pretty please?)

In Valdyan:

verin: east, morning
hanre: south, day
telhin: west, evening
havin: north, night

Every word used as a time of day could of course mean "time when the
sun is in the X". Except "north", but that's necessary to close the
circle; how else can the sun come back to the east in the morning,
(<g> difficult to translate that last phrase!) and it's dark so you
can't see where it is anyway (this is probably the way most Valdyans
think of it, not that it's dark because the sun isn't there).

   Irina

            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
       http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/index.html (English)
    http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)