Compass points and relative directions
Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2016 5:06 am
I have been studying toki pona now for about a week, and am fascinated by the challenge of creating compound words.
So far I have had little problem coming up with compound words for almost everything I wish to describe (even if some of these have ended up being very long!) but there are several words which I have found difficult to translate - namely 'north and south, and left and right'.
East and west seem easy - 'ma suno kama' and 'ma suno tawa'.
If you stick to only one hemisphere, then you can perhaps get away with relating how the sun travels through the sky (apologies if the toki pona is bad!):
South: sky where the sun is - (ma) sewi pi suno
North: sky where the sun is not - (ma) sewi pi suno ala
Obviously, in the southern hemisphere these would have to be reversed, which might cause confusion.
Other possibilities might be using stars (north star/southern cross) or conflating up/north/down south (though even in English this annoys me!)
I'm stuck with right and left though - I've seen examples like 'side where heart is', or 'good side/bad side' but they don't feel 'definite' enough.
Perhaps toki pona is another language where cardinal directions make more sense than relative ones? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_ ... directions
Any current thoughts on this?
So far I have had little problem coming up with compound words for almost everything I wish to describe (even if some of these have ended up being very long!) but there are several words which I have found difficult to translate - namely 'north and south, and left and right'.
East and west seem easy - 'ma suno kama' and 'ma suno tawa'.
If you stick to only one hemisphere, then you can perhaps get away with relating how the sun travels through the sky (apologies if the toki pona is bad!):
South: sky where the sun is - (ma) sewi pi suno
North: sky where the sun is not - (ma) sewi pi suno ala
Obviously, in the southern hemisphere these would have to be reversed, which might cause confusion.
Other possibilities might be using stars (north star/southern cross) or conflating up/north/down south (though even in English this annoys me!)
I'm stuck with right and left though - I've seen examples like 'side where heart is', or 'good side/bad side' but they don't feel 'definite' enough.
Perhaps toki pona is another language where cardinal directions make more sense than relative ones? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_ ... directions
Any current thoughts on this?