Re: irregularities

Now, think about it, If you're facing east(changed the idea from N and S to E and W
due to the sun coming from thet direction. and you turn around, ta-da, you have
the west, that is the reason.

Oh and you've given me a new idiom

Sun's skies
Star's skies 

Day and night. :-) 


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Michael Poxon 
  To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU 
  Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 2:52 PM
  Subject: Re: Irregularities



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: "Christophe Grandsire" <christophe.grandsire@...>
  To: <CONLANG@...>
  Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2001 1:35 PM
  Subject: Re: Irregularities

 It's not the North and South skies I had the problem with - it was the
division of the Earth into clearly defined N and S halves with that division
made culturally through the medium of language. Although the original article
talked about the two skies (no problem!) there was a closing aside which
queried one's ability to see the Southern half of the Earth from any point
other than the equator. It was the thought behind that which struck me as
strange.
 As an astronomer myself, I can appreciate the transition from day sky to night
sky in a physical sense, but 'culturally' they are different. Stars, and to
some extent the Moon, 'belong' to the night sky (even today, some people think
you can't see the Moon at daytime because it 'belongs' to the night. I know it
sounds mad, but believe me, I speak from experence!)


  > 
  > I don't see what's to understand about it! This culture sees the sky into two
  > parts: a "North sky" and a "South sky". Why they do so may have nothing to do
  > with what they see or not. It may have mythological reasons, or other reasons
  > that we don't know. I don't understand how one could think of the "day sky" and
  > the "night sky" as two different skies, since the passage from one to another
  > is slow and can be seen  (stars appear in the sky well before the sky is really
  > dark). Yet it's well accepted, through reconstruction evidence (and quite
  > strong for those two words) and maybe other evidence, that the Proto-Indo-
  > European people thought there was two skies turning around the planet, one for
  > the day and one for the night. The fact that there is no actual frontier
  > between the two doesn't change anything.
  > 

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