Re: Semantic typology?

I always felt something was wrong with the
compass directions in Sohlodar. Now I realize
that they are shifted 45 degrees
counterclockwise, so that I have:

| Kijeb     | Sohlob    | English   | Direction
|-----------|-----------|-----------|----------
| kimra     | kember    | 'north'   | NW
| yasa      | yah       | 'east'    | NE
| stirkyu   | istirdj   | 'south'   | SE
| styungwa  | aesjtong  | 'west'    | SW

It makes perfect sense WRT local climate too,
where the 'north' and 'east' are both more arid
and desert-like than the 'west' and 'south'. I now
see that it is the NORTH which is dry and the
SOUTH which gets more rain. Since the 'south-west'
is temperate rather than tropical Sohlodar is
probably located on the southern hemisphere of its
planet. You learn something every day!

Carl Banks skrev:
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>> Quoting Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...>:
>>
>> [snip]
>>>> Compass directions, maybe? I would assume any
>>>> language distinguishing roots for any of the
>>>> intercardinals should also distinguish some
>>>> for the
>>> cardinals.
>>>
>>> That's a sensible hypothesis. Do you know of
>>> any languages that have roots for the
>>> intercardinals rather than deriving them from
>>> cardinals?
>>
>> I recently read an old (1928) article by L.
>> Weibull which argued that in pre-Christian
>> Scandinavia, the "north", "east", "south",
>> "west" actually designated NE, SE, SW, and NW,
>> respectively. I haven't heard of the idea in
>> anything written in the eighty years since, so
>> I guess it didn't win academical acceptance,
>> but it does render more sensible some
>> geographical informations in viking age texts.
>
> At Penn State University, where the streets are
> aligned almost exactly diagonally (45 degrees)
> relative to the cardinal directions, everyone
> uses North, South, East, and West to refer to
> the street directions: north is actually
> northwest. The campus maps are even drawn with
> northwest to the top.
>
> This leads to oddities such as the North
> Residence Halls being at almost the same
> latitude as the South Residence Halls.

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