Astronomical terms

[Scott Berthiaume]

Scott,
>From the back of my head I can only tell you so far the way to refer to the sun and the moon in Western Otomi:

"nzöno" (<ö> open /o/) is the name for the moon, and as usual for month as well.
"hjadi" is the sun, it's root "hja-" -an old palatalization of a certain /-j/ group on an ancient "ha-" theme- is also found in the word for "light", which is "hja-'-ts'i". Sorry about tones, but I believe that in both cases the /a/ in the root receives a low tone. 

I'll look into the way the say other astronomic entities, but as for the moon and the sun, I have heard people refer to them as "our honorable father the sun " and "our honorable mother the moon". And here the morph for "father" is older than the current word for father, which evinces that the construction is old enough. If you need more details, I'm here.   

Inspirations,
Enrique




At 12:11 PM 11/12/02 -0600, Scott Berthiaume wrote:

  I have started collecting astronimical terms for Northern Pame (Otomanguean, San Luis Potosi).  So far I have just these:
   
  Venus: proper noun meaning 'morning star'
  Orion's belt: staff to sow seed
  Piamedes: 'the women'
  Sun: 'man'
  Moon: 'woman'
   
  Anyone have any data or sources for others in Otomanguean?
   
  Scott Berthiaume
  -------------------------------------------------------------
  Scott and Tonia Berthiaume
  Fuente del Bosque #117
  Col. Balcones del Valle
  San Luis Potosí, SLP
  México
  email: scott-tonia_berthiaume at sil.org
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