Светлой памяти Нины Макаровны Чередеевой-


-----Солнце языкаLe Soleil du langageشمس اللغةEl Sol del lenguajeThe Sun of Language

The Sun of Language

Turkish gün ‘day’ originally denoted the Sun, as evidenced by its archaic sibling, Turkmen gün ‘Sun; day’ and, indeed, by Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Yakut күн [kün] ‘Sun; day’, all going back to Proto-Turkic *kün ‘Sun; day’. 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 denotes both the Sun and the day. Turkish güney ‘South’ denotes the ‘sunny side’ of a place, as opposed to kuzey ‘North’, the ‘shadowed side’. In Ottoman Turkish, the South was referred to as cenup, from Arabic جنوب [žanūb] ‘South’, itself from جنب [žanb] ‘side’, the one the Sun reaches at noon (before setting then altogether disappearing). This is mirrored in English South itself, which goes back to Germanic sunþ- ‘the sunny side’, marking the transition from the East (Turkish doǧu), where nature (Turkish doǧa), truth (Turkish doǧru) and Earth’s fastest animal, the Peregrine falcon (Turkish doğan), are born (Turkish doǧar). Several Slavic languages call the South юг/ jug, a word sharing the same 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, where the Sun reaches its zenith at noon – is but an increment of the East, the Sun’s cradle. This is further corroborated by the other Slavic 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, which otherwise means ‘noon’. Maltese – Europe’s only Semitic language – calls the South nofsinhar, from Arabic نصف النهار [niṣfu-n-nahār] ‘midday’. Basque, the language of Europe’s indigenous, Pre-Indo-European population, mirrors Turkish in a remarkable way: to Turkish gün ‘day’ – which originally denoted the Sun, today called güneş – corresponds Basque egun ‘day’, which originally denoted the Sun, today called eguzki. To Turkish güney ‘South’ corresponds Basque ego. The truth in Basque is called egia, mirroring above-mentioned Turkish doǧru 'truth', which – together with doǧa 'nature' – goes back to doǧu 'East'.

Language is the only science that holds the keys to our ancestors’ worldview and, through them, to the Universe.

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