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dr_tectonic October 18 2005, 05:44:14 UTC
I'm kinda surprised you don't have a core syllable for "direction". Then you could do dawn/day-wards and dusk/night-wards for east and west, and cold-wards and hot-wards for north and south.

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aadroma October 18 2005, 05:49:33 UTC
Well I could probably use "kú" - "Towards the place", as "K" = "location, place, area", and "ú" = "until, towards," among others ... The "K" is seen in "Féük" (Hot Not-Be Place), but since this is a conlang in process, I could edit these and fix them to reflect "east" and "west" if I were to use a direction syllable.

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sfopanda October 18 2005, 11:11:55 UTC
"Cold-wards" and "hot-wards" work from the point of view of a northern hemisphere centric culture, but would be reversed in the southern hemisphere.

If the concept of dawn (or sun) is used as the basis for direction, then north could be "left" and south could be "right" - which I believe is the origin of the English word for north.

In Chinese, north (北)is a pictogram of two people back to back. I have no idea where that comes from... it could very well be based on a story or an actual event.

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muckefuck October 18 2005, 15:39:30 UTC
The explanation I know for 北 is that it's the direction you turn your back to, since that's where the cold winds come from. It's worth mentioning in this connexion that, traditionally, the main entrances to Chinese dwellings have always faced south.

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dr_tectonic October 18 2005, 15:59:43 UTC
Actually, it would be kinda cool if Nōsō-speakers essentially defined the directions as "pole-wards" and "equator-wards" rather than "towards Santa Claus" and "towards penguins"...

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aadroma October 18 2005, 20:10:07 UTC
Actually, I don't have a word for "south" yet, so I might do that ^_-

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