Constellation (was: Re: Teliya Nevashi Grammar beginnings)

From: Mia Soderquist <happycritter@...>

> On 7/24/07, Michael Poxon <mike@...> wrote:
> > do any of your concultures have names for constellations that are
> > different from traditional ones?
> I am not
> even entirely sure any of my languages has had a word for
> "constellation" (although it is probably safe to say that it would
> have been a compound word in ea-luna. "star picture" or some such.)
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.

Why all this? Because I've just  finished redocumenting all my G

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