Re: Odp: Semantic fields

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 441
Date: 1999-12-06

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Christopher Gwinn
To: cybalist@egroups.com
Sent: Friday, December 03, 1999 10:15 PM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: Semantic fields

Christopher wrote:

The Germanic Hell (or Otherworld) was placed in the North - which parallels
the meanings behind the Irish words Tuaith "North" (*Teuti-) and Tuath
(*Teut-o) which means "left/evil" and Old Welsh Tut "magician" (*Teut-o).


Sabine wrote:
I thought I'd remind you that apart from the linguistic 'north'- connections
the ancient Greeks also believed Apollo to stay 'behind the north wind', far
away in an otherworld of 'boreas' during the Winter - even though the sun in
Winter seems to hide in the south and make the dark north even darker.
Although here in Greece even in Winter there is a lot of light, the darkness
of the north seems to have been frightening enough to believe the god of
light to have gone to the fearful 'northern' darkness.
And one question: Does the name of the 'Tuatha de Danaan' in Irish mythology
then mean 'northern Dan(aen) people'? Why? where there others, too?

Sabine
Christopher:
 
Aren't you confusing a couple of roots? The Goidelic adverbs meaning 'in front', 'behind', 'left' and 'right' (OIr air, íar, túaid, dess) also designate the four directions (E, W, N, S) as viewed by an observer facing the rising sun. This accounts for the north/left connection, while the association of 'left' with 'bad' is an anatomically grounded universal.
 
The root *teut-, which underlies Old Irish túath has nothing to do with 'left' or 'north', or 'evil' for that matter. It is related to Oscan touta, Gothic þiuda, Old English þeod, Lithuanian tautà -- all meaning 'folk, populus, race' hence often 'country' by semantic extension. It also occurs in Breton tud 'people', Gaulish (and Ibero-Celtic) names such as Teutates/To(u)tates, as well as in the Celtic word for their Germanic neighbours -- the Teutoni.  There are several well-known derivatives of *teut-: Old English þeoden, Gothic þiudan 'lord, ruler', German Deutsch < *þiud-isk-a- 'of the people' = 'ours'. It is one of the best-known lexical isoglosses that link together Baltic, Germanic and Italo-Celtic, part of Meillet's 'vocabulaire du Nord-Ouest'.
 
Sabine:
 
Túatha Dé Danann means 'the People of the (Mother-)Goddess Danu'. Please note that Dé should be capitalised and that it does not mean 'of' but is the genitive of GODDESS.
 
Piotr