Re: Constellation (was: Re: Teliya Nevashi Grammar beginnings)

Aha! So that explains the term "soustavy" in a Czech star catalogue I have.
Presumably means "star cluster". As the stars are so central to the culture,
Omina speakers have lots of words for different sorts! Bright stars (the
main ones in a constellation) are "ilma" and a constellation itself is
"ilmeta" with the "group of similar objects" suffix -eta (which happens to
be the same as the Basque!). Small stars are "tina" and "tineta" means a
star cluster, though some clusters such as the Pleiades and the Perseus
double cluster have their own names.
The pleiades are "oskoita" (a school of fish) while the V-shaped Hyades
nearby are "rusku" (the net) being wielded by "Oskori" (the fisherman)
coincident with our Orion, the hunter.
Still in the sky, some cultures don't have constellations of stars - several
Andean peoples have constellations of dark nebulae instead (which abound in
the southern sky) such as the llama, toad, anaconda, etc. Food for thought
for concultures, maybe?
Mike
>
> The Germanic languages take this approach *as* does Hungarian -- go
> figger. As near as I can figure out, Russian and Czech have some sort of
> prefix, like "con-", (Russ: "so-"; Czech: "sou-") meaning "bunch together"
> or something like that, and "stars". Chinese, I knew. It's
> "stars-seat/place/pedestal" but since the second character is also a
> measure word for mountains and bridges, I like that take on it. I never
> thought of it before (D'oh!), but the Japanese pronunciation of this word
> is homonymous with sitting formally on tatami for things like tea
> ceremony. Meanwhile, while my Webster's says "constellation" is Late
> Latin, I found "sidus" in the Latin dictionary, which is cool.
>