Re: [tied] that culminates everything

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 15493
Date: 2002-09-15

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."*******