Re: [tied] that culminates everything

Of course we have Russian svet and OCS sve^tU, which mean BOTH 'light' and 'world' and should spare Alex the fare to Papua New Guinea. Polish s'wiat 'world' and s'wiatl/o 'light' are related exactly like the Ukrainian words (one could add a handful of Slavic words for 'dawn'). The whole cluster reflects PIE *k^wei- 'be bright'. Cross-linguistically, the words for 'the world' have various semantic connections and an association with 'light' is anything but extraordinary.

Lat. lux, lu:na and lu:men are all derivatives of *leuk- 'shine, be white'.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: george knysh

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2002 1:16 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] that culminates everything

--- alexmoeller@... wrote: > I read now that the word "light" in romanian is in > fact the > word "world", so the best romanian lingusits, > Pushcariu & Co. > light= germ. Licht= rom lumina > DEX explains lumina= probable from "lume" because > "lume" (old > meaning) meant light. > I take a look at the word lume and I see as fallow: > lume= lat. lumen=world. *****GK: What dictionary are you using? My Oxford Latin Dictionary (1985 reprint of the original 1982 Glare ed.) offers (p. 1050, cols. 1-2) 11 (eleven) different meanings for "lumen", none of which is "world". But the connection to "lux"=light is crystal clear. OTOH there might (?) be some linkage between "svit" (world) and "svitlo" (light) in Ukr. and perhaps other Slavic languages. At least I "dumaju, mirkuju, hadaju shcho jakyjs' zvyazok tut mozhlyvyj, khiba shcho nashi prekrasni movoznavtsi dokazhut' meni protylezhne."*******