Re: CHAT: Directions

Raymond A. Brown wrote:
>
> At 5:52 pm -0500 8/7/99, Nik Taylor wrote:
> ....
> >
> >North unknown, but possibly related to Oscan-Umbrian (an Italic
> >language), nertro-, meaning left, if so, it would mean "left, when
> >facing the rising sun"
>
> That's an etymology I'd not met before.  But it seems to me perfectly
> possible that some pre-IE word might have found its way both into Germanic
> & turn up in some IE-derived language(s) in the Italian peninsular.  The
> equation "left(side)" = "north" is quite likely; in Welsh 'de' may mean
> "right(side)" or "south".
It does.  This explanation for the directions in Welsh was explained to
me when I was studying in Wales.  I don't have an etymological
dictionary
for Welsh at home (my GPC only goes up to rhan XV--still only in the
"d"s)
so I can't confirm that gogledd once meant "left" as well; IIRC, someone
told
me that an earlier term in Welsh meant left/north.  But "de" is
definitely
both "right" and "south."

Sally