Re: CHAT: Directions

Just a little "as for my conlang" post...

There are no native Tokana words to refer to the four directions.
Terms were borrowed from another language, but they're not often
used:
        north   heut
        south   is
        east    tsim
        west    set

The closest thing to a native word for west is "ahuafaut", which
means "the direction that the sun travels in".  (East can thus be
referred to as "ahokasuaut" = "the opposite of the direction the
sun travels in".)  In general, though, the Tokana prefer to
orient themselves by means of local topological features.  So
there are terms that mean things like "towards the river", "away
from the river", "towards the shore", "away from the shore",
"upstream", and "downstream".

Matt.