Светлой памяти Нины Макаровны Чередеевой-


L'Arbre du Savoir

Our Father in Heaven

Turkish gün ‘day’ originally denoted the Sun, as evidenced by its archaic sibling, Turkmen gün ‘Sun; day’, going back to Proto-Turkic *kün ‘Sun; day’, which has survived both in Kazakh and Kyrgyz. The ‘day’ being the reflection of Sun’s light on Earth, the word had from early times acquired both meanings, as corroborated by Hungarian nap, which itself denotes both the Sun and the day. Turkish güney ‘South’ literally means ‘sunside’, as attested by Azeri güney ‘the sunny side (of any place)’, in contrast with kuzey ‘North’ – literally, ‘the shadowed side’. In Ottoman Turkish, the South was referred to as cenup, from Arabic جنوب [žanūb] ‘South’, itself from جنب [žanb] ‘(sun)side’, mirrored in English South itself, which goes back to Germanic *sunþ- ‘sunside’, marking the immediate transition (always from our ancestors' viewpoint) from Turkish doǧu 'East' – where doǧa 'nature', doǧru 'truth' and doğan 'the peregrine falcon' (Earth’s fastest animal) doǧar 'are born'.

Several Slavic languages call the South юг/ jug, a word sharing a common root with Greek αυγή [augē] ‘dawn’, Lithuanian augti ‘to grow’ and Latin augere ‘to increase’ (hence, through French, augment). This leads to the conclusion that the ‘South’ – the point, whereat the Sun reaches its zenith at noon – is but an increment of the East, the Sun’s cradle. This is further corroborated by Slavic’s other, more descriptive name of the South: Belarusian поўдзень [poudzen’]/ Polish południe/ Ukrainian південь [pivden’] – literally ‘midday’, the time of the day the Sun is at its highest. While ‘South’ in French is called sud (a Germanic loanword), Southern France is referred to as Midi, literally ‘noon’. Maltese – Europe’s only Semitic language – calls the South nofsinhar, from Arabic نصف النهار [niṣfu-n-nahār], literally ‘middle of the day’, which explains why Lithuanian pietūs 'South' also means 'lunch'.

Basque, the language of Europe’s most achaic population, calls the Sun egu(zki), hence ego ‘South’. Truth in Basque is called egia, simultaneously mirroring Turkish doǧru ‘truth’ (from doǧu ‘East’) and Slavic правда/ pravda ‘truth; justice’, from право/ pravo, whose shifting meaning from 'straight ahead' to 'right-hand side' reproduces the augment from East-born Greek αυγή [augē] ‘dawn’ to Slavic юг/ jug 'South'. No wonder Turks call the right-hand side sağ, a word that has generated sağlık ‘health’, sağlam ‘robust’ and sağlamak ‘nurture’ – but also Sağol! ‘Thank you!’ (literally, sağ ol ‘be healthy; whole; safe’), thus highlighting the central role Our Father in Heaven has been playing in shaping our Collective Unconscious. Turkish yemin ederim ‘I swear’ – literally, ‘I give an oath’, from Arabic يمين [yamīn] ‘the right-hand’, cognate with Ancient Hebrew ימין [yamīn] 'South' – is further proof that solace, otherwise known as consolation, has since the dawn of time been our sole remedy against desolation!

✉️-ilv@inlinguaveritas.org
-This site owes its conception to Sarah Frantz-
-Ce site doit sa naissance à Elian Carsenat--