Just curious about a few oddities in the naming of the directions,
[*] Why did French, Spanish etc. borrow from Germanic with these common words, while retaining Latin forms for the adjectives?
[*] Why did the word for ‘east’ end up meaning ‘south’ in Latin?
[*] Are there similar etymologies in non-IE languages?
This is something that several Romance Language linguists I’ve read in the past have asked along with why certain colors in the Romance languages happen to be Germanic too (e.g. It. bianco, Sp. blanco, Fr. blanc "white", Fr. Sp. gris "gray", Fr. brun "brown", French bleu; Catalan blau "blue" ) and none of them have an answer even though they said that the Romans certainly were’nt color blind nor did they lack a sense of direction.
Latin did have its own words for the different directions Septentrionalis or Borealis (North), Meridionalis and Austrialis (South), Occidentalis (West) and Orientalis (East) but none survived in any of its daughter languages. The French Nord, Sud, Ouest and Est are early borrowings from Anglo-Saxon and were later borrowed into the other Romance languages.
Romanian has its own words Miaza noapte "North" < Media nocte, Miaza zi < Media die, Apus < Ad positus (referring to the setting of the sun) and Rasarit < resurectus (referring to Christ’s resurrection in the East) but it sometimes uses nord, sud, est, and vest.
One of the Slavic languages Slovincian (now extinct), also borrowed the names of its directions from Teutonic (German) and had sudoust (southeast) and nordoust (northeast) etc.
In short, foreign words are not always borrowed for rational reasons and the names of the directions are just another example of it.
<<<Why did French, Spanish etc. borrow from Germanic with these common words, while retaining Latin forms for the adjectives?<<<
Not really an answer, rather a vague comment. No idea where it can lead to..
As for Portuguese, Da Cunha’s Dicionário Etimológico says that ‘este’ is a loan from French. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was also the case for Spanish.
My first guess was the Germanic speaking Franks, but Rey’s Dictionnaire historique de la langue française mentions, and excuse me my French: "EST comme les noms d’autres points cardinaux, représente un emprunt (v. 1140) au vieil anglais [my stress] east attesté au IXe s. comme adverbe et au XIIe s. comme nom." The oldest French form is heste.
well, that is strange, that the French would borrow from English, when asking directions.
And I think everyone else borrowed from French, but considering that they are highly ‘territorial’ words, it still seems strange.
Miaza zi < Media die
seems so close to French midi , and I think I should post another topic on color names, another irrational borrowing system.
Come to think of it, one author I read (I think it was W.D. Elcock - "The Romance Languages") did suggest that the reason the Franks (French) borrowed English words for the four directions was because the Anglo-Saxons were good navigators on the sea in ancient times. While this is plausible, most linguists would still consider it just a theory.
Some languages of the world, I’ve read, have no words for "north, south, east or west" . They use words meaning "forwards, backwards, left and right" instead. There might be some people reading this who can think of languages that uses other systems (Anders?).
French midi and Romanian miaza (mid / middle) are related. In fact, Romanian (or Rumanian) is roughly midway between Italian and Old French in terms of relationships within the Romance family of languages if you can overlook the numerous Balkan, Slavic, East Germanic, Magyar and Turco-Tartar loan words in the language.
I have read about some villagers living on mountain side. Their word for right and left are "up the slope" and "down the slope." Right and left (and perhaps east and west too) in many languages are not focal terms but are periphrases. This happens because these words, as opposed to front and behind, up and down, have no cue in human body that are cognitively distinct enough to warrant an absolute concept and consequently an independent term.
I thought I have a link saved on my PC to a research by a member of Max Planck Institute but I couldn’t find any. So above is something very sketchy of Kyoko Inoue wrote.
Spatial cognition has always been an understandably central part of cognitive science. However, the categories postulated for spatial conceptualization and in particular their coding in language are all too of ten assumed to be universal and more or less intuitively available to the researcher independent of the researcher’s own cultural background. The Cognitive Anthropology Research Group of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics has operated from the premise that the basic categories of spatial representation in language and other aspects of cognition (and the degree to which such categories can be considered universal) have yet to be determined. The group takes a fundamentally anthropological approach, which (1) explores semantic parameters from a language specific point of view, (2) explores the full range of usage of relevant linguistic expressions in verbal interaction, (3) investigates associated cultural phenomena, and (4) explores correlated non-linguistic cognitive preferences. This exploratory research into spatial cognition demonstrates considerable cross-linguistic and cross-cultural variation in seemingly basic spatial categorization. The variation correlates not just with the linguistic system available to the subjects, but also with their language use in specific social contexts, with their gestural representations of space, and with the other semiotic systems found in the culture, During the presentation, we will demonstrate both some linguistic elicitation techniques and various non-linguistic cognitive experiments that were developed in turn. The coordinated results from these elicitations and cognitive experiments allow us to better determine the categories of human spatial reasoning and the degree of variation across individuals and cultures.
The fact that Germanic compass words may be borrowed in strange language environment even without military dominance may well be testified by Russian where there exists double system:
The Dutch words are mainly sailors’ terms. But they are between rare sea terms known to everybody and sporadically try to overcome its special character.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was also the case for Spanish.
In Spanish, they entered in the XVth century and are the first recorded anglicisms in the history of our language… Not until the XXth century did we recommence to import significative terms… Oddly enough.
Notwithstanding, I’m not satisfied with some reasoning here:
I haven’t heard of any major navigation feat performed by Anglo-Saxons… As far as I know, they merely sailed from Jutland and current northern Germany to East Anglia, not something to be extremely famous for… and, for instance in Spain, we had the strong Arabic influence, who did have a word (good expression here…:D) on sailing instruments…
And, well, the other posters almost said we could barely have an answer… :’( Where’s Garzo?? I want something simple and fitting! :D
Another curiosity, Arabs used to put North at the bottom and South at the top in their maps. I wonder what made them think that way… and what made us think the other way.
Do we know about what century these direction words were incorporated into the respective languages? I wonder if it is something as simple as the mariner’s compass, the proliferation of which may have been accelerated by Dutch explorers…?
Wikipedia has a good introductory article on the compass.
-Tim
P.S. I linked to the English article at Wikipedia, but it should be available in many other languages as well.
<<<Do we know about what century these direction words were incorporated into the respective languages? I wonder if it is something as simple as the mariner’s compass, the proliferation of which may have been accelerated by Dutch explorers…? <<<
What the Dutch words (and other marine related terminology) in Russian are concerned, i would guess the 18th century. Peter the Great used Dutch marine experts to set up his Russian fleet. He even visited the Low Countries himself to have a look at the shipyards of Holland, the rising naval power of that moment.
In the Middle Ages, the names of the winds were commonly known throughout the Mediterranean countries as tramontana (N), greco (NE), levante (E), siroco (SE), ostro (S), libeccio (SW), ponente (W) and maestro (NW). On portolan charts you can see the initials of these winds labeled around the edge as T, G, L, S, O, L, P, and M.
In the Middle Ages, the names of the winds were commonly known throughout the Mediterranean countries as tramontana (N), greco (NE), levante (E), siroco (SE), ostro (S), libeccio (SW), ponente (W) and maestro (NW). On portolan charts you can see the initials of these winds labeled around the edge as T, G, L, S, O, L, P, and M.
Hey, we use those still!! Some of them are known to anyone: "tramontana", "levante" and "sirtoco", because teh weatherman mentions them every now and then, although the latter’s exact procedence is vague in our minds. The rest you may well hear amongst more "maritime" people.
What the Dutch words (and other marine related terminology) in Russian are concerned, i would guess the 18th century.
I wrote:
<<<What the Dutch words (and other marine related terminology) in Russian are concerned, i would guess the 18th century.<<<
WS:
<<<But, what about the topic’s words!! <<<
I wrote:
[continued from the very same mail]
<<< ankor = anker; dama = dam; skipper = schipper; mast = mast; vlag = vlag, schip; kajuta = kajuit; kil = kiel I wouldn’t be surprised if the compass directions fit in this series.<<<
Following article seems to confirm this.
"Nederlands & Duits in de Russische taal
Door de interesse van tsaar Peter de Grote in de Nederlandse scheepvaart zijn er nogal wat Nederlandse woorden (scheepvaarttermen) in het Russisch beland:
[list snipped] * noord - nord
* zuid - sjuid
* oost - ost
* west - vest " http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russisch
I’m going to do my best to find a bit more information.
