Re: Weird little color system
| From: | Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, August 6, 2004, 20:26 |
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Trebor wrote:
> Paul wrote: "I think the point was that in the languages everyone is
> familiar with, if one is derived from the other, it'll be "left" derived
> from "right", rather than dublex-wise."
>
> Why would it be more likely one way or the other?
>
In many traditional cultures, right is good, left is bad-- the left hand is
tabooed for many activities-- eating in particular, touching, handling etc.
etc.
At least in Indonesia, the reasoning is that one uses the left hand to clean
oneself after going to the toilet.
Though aside from E-o, I don't know offhand of any natlang where "left" is a
pejorative deriv. of "right"; but words for "left" certainly take on
pejorative meanings-- consider our use in Engl. of gauche, sinister,
"left-handed compliment" etc. And IIRC, one of the Oceanic words for left
seems to be derived from a word for "enemy"; and again IIRC the cognate of
Javanese _kewa_ [kewQ] 'left' means 'crooked' elsewhere.
I found an amusing and perhaps relatable phenomenon in several Austronesian
languages, where cognate forms mean (1) penis, scrotum in some, (2) lie,
boast, in others.
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