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N by NW - Meaning of Compass Points ? | ||
Tags: Vocabulary learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 8 22 December 2006 at 4:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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It would be interesting to hear about how the compass points are used in different meanings in different languages.
Mandarin has "dongxi" (lit. eastwest) for "thing". (It also has "zuoyou" - lit. leftright, for "more or less" but the many meanings of left and right were already discussed in another thread I think). Swedish has sydväst (southwest)= a kind of mariner's headware. In English "going south" is one of the many euphemisms for passing away. In Spanish "perder el norte" (lose ones north) is to lose your bearings. Another category is when direction words just happen to coincide with some other word, such as Swedish väst=west and vest, ost=east and cheese, or Finnish lounas=southwest and lunch. As a second, related question, if we think about how directions in between the four cardinal points are constructed, generally they follow a pattern like north+west = northwest. But at least in Finnish totally unrelated names are used (I wouldn't be surprised if the same goes for Estonian too though I don't know). Do you know any other language that does that? Edited by Hencke on 22 December 2006 at 4:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6702 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 2 of 8 22 December 2006 at 4:50am | IP Logged | |||||
My teacher was talking about the cardinal directions just the other day. Originally, all the characters actually meant something else, and were adopted for use in directions. Bei (north), for instance, meant "back," and the character was meant to show two people sitting back to back. As a matter of fact, up until the last century or so, the character was used for both senses. Only in recent times were they distinguished, with "body" given a body/meat radical to make the meaning clear. She wasn't clear exactly what the other three meant, but it's the underlying meaning that gives dongxi its meaning as thing, I think.
Intriguingly, it can also mean "control." Edited by Raincrowlee on 22 December 2006 at 4:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 3 of 8 22 December 2006 at 7:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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"Go south" doesn't actually mean "to die" in English; it means to deteriorate or decline, and applies to situations of all kinds: the stock market, a business meeting, one's luck, etc.
"Go west" can euphemistically mean to die, but it's not frequently used. In North America, "the North" in a historical context refers to the Union States of the US, and the South the Confederacy. Nowadays, "Great White North" is a nickname for Canada. In Japanese, each compass point has two names, depending on if it's used alone or in a compound word. The order in which the directions are named is always E-W-S-N, unlike English where the order is always N-S-E-W. Putting all the directions together in Japanese forms a word in itself, tou-zai-nan-boku, which can mean "everywhere" or "direction". Compass directions are frequently compounded with other words to form Japanese place-names. For example: Toukyou -> Tokyo, "eastern capital" Hokkaidou -> Hokaido "north sea route" Pekin -> Beijing "northern capital" Edited by Captain Haddock on 22 December 2006 at 7:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 8 22 December 2006 at 12:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for the clarification. I am pretty sure I have seen it used for dying too somewhere, but after googling around I see that the meaning you give is totally predominant.
It is actually natural for the west to have that meaning, since it is the direction where the sun goes down and "dies" each evening. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6702 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 5 of 8 22 December 2006 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
Also true in Chinese. As you say, Beijing, plus cities like Nanjing, Taibei, Tainan, Taidong (but, curiously, no Xijing or Taixi), or provinces like Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Xizang, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 8 23 December 2006 at 9:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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The fact that directions are frequently included as part of geographical names is true in 100 per cent of the languages of the world.
Please all start another thread if you are really itching to spend your efforts on discussing something obvious like that. Here it only confuses the issue and may block out genuine answers to what I was asking about. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| telephos Triglot Newbie Canada Joined 6267 days ago 29 posts - 31 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Russian Studies: Norwegian, Ancient Greek | Message 7 of 8 02 October 2007 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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être à l'ouest, être complètement à l'ouest (French) "to be in the West, to be completely in the West"
means : 1. to be tired, haggard 2. to daydream Three etymologies are usually given: - It comes from "to go west" in English. - In the 19th century most theatres in Paris were situated in the east. After the shows, when it was late, the sleepy audience had to move westwards to go home. - It comes from Hergé's Tintin albums. Professor Calculus always wants to go west. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| manny Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6358 days ago 248 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Tagalog Studies: French, German | Message 8 of 8 02 October 2007 at 11:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
In Vietnamese too - at least when it was written in Chinese characters. Tonkin, also spelled Tongkin or Tongking, ... The term derives from Đông Kinh (東京), a former name of Hanoi, which was the capital of Vietnam since the 7th century. (The name means "eastern capital", and is identical in meaning and written form in Chinese characters to that of Tokyo.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonkin Edited by manny on 02 October 2007 at 11:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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