Re: cardinal points

In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex_lycos" <altamix@...> scrise:

> In Rom. there is an another way to tell about the cardinal points
> they being connected with the sun and with the belief that in
> North is born the night in south is born the day.
> North: miazã-noapte ( middle of the night)
> South miazã-zi ( middle of the day)

You should link that with southern position of sun at noon. By
inversion, at midnight the sun should be in the opposite sense,
hence North (actually it is so, it's just one can't see it, the
Earth is far from being transparent).

> [...] About "apus" (west) is given as a Rom. contstruct from " a
> apune" ( Lat . apponere, even if the semantism doesn't matches,
> the semantism of Rom. word is explained in the usual way)

I suppose you never heard about French "ponant" which means exactly
the same thing (`West`). The semantism is obvious: the place where
the sun goes at the end of the day, seen as low horizon level. The
word (used mostly in Southern France), as well as its' Spanish and
Italian counterparts (poniente / ponente), is to be derived from
VL "[so:l] po:nens", where "po:nens" is the participle of "po:nere"
meaning also `fall` (of stars, etc.).

> and about "rãsãrit"( east) is given too as a directly Rom.
> construction from "a rasari" ( to rise, to appear) which should
> derive from an presumably Latin *resalire

Another obvious construction, as justified as Romanian "rescrie,
regandi", etc. The sun rises (again and again) at East. The
participle of "salire" matches the Occidental forms "Levant(e)".

> Very interesting I find the denomination for the wind which is
> blowing from east. It is called "Austrul".

"Austrul" is _not_ blowing from East: it's a humid and hot Southern
or South-Western wind. An Eastern wind could never be humid and hot.
Of course, it's name is to be connected to "australis" (`southern;
of/brought by the south wind`).

> Second, I ask myself if there is a connection betwen Rom. "a
> rãsãri" and the Germanic world.

Stop asking, there is no connection. Latin "*re-salire" (written
like this to underline the elements) fits both semantically and
phonetically.

> On another hand, one will say " a rasari" is a compound from
> prefix "re" and "sare" (to jump) meaning " re-jumping which can
> be seen as the "re-jumping" in every day of the sun.

It's compound in Latin. In Romanian it's no longer felt as such,
since unstressed /e/ > /ã/.

> Against this idee speaks the fact the verb belongs to the group
> of verbs which are derivated with 0-grade of the root , meaning
> the oldest verbs in the language ( rãsar, rãsari, rãsare).

So what?! An inherited Latin word is to be considered among old
words of Romanian language (you still have to keep in mind that
Romanian, as well as other modern Romance languages, is nothing
else but Latin, modified diachronically).

Marius Iacomi