Return-Path: id aa14699; 3 Dec 90 11:55 EST Date: Mon, 3 Dec 90 11:51:36 EST From: Stephen Humble Message-Id: <9012031651.AA28481@splinter.coe.northeastern.edu> To: cowan@marob.masa.com Cc: j8ij@vax5.cit.cornell.edu, lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com In-Reply-To: John Cowan's message of Wed, 28 Nov 90 15:46 EST Subject: Weather verbs X-Nsa-Fodder: Saudi Arabia munitions Baghdad plutonium Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!nueng.coe.northeastern.edu!deeb Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Mon Dec 3 12:43:00 1990 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!splinter.coe.northeastern.edu!deeb cowan@marob.masa.com (John Cowan) sez: > In article <1990Nov27.125756.1178@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> you write: > >Does anyone know of a language or languages in which weather verbs > >(rain,snow...) take "real" subjects. > > > >If there are such languages is there any correlation with a belief in weather > >Gods? In Turkish, "It's raining." is "G\"ok ya\ug\iyor.", which means "The sky is raining.". "It's snowing." is "Kar ya\ug\iyor.", which means "Snow is raining." A better translation for "ya\ug\iyor" is "is precipitating", since the sentence "Ya\ugmur ya\ug\iyor." (literally "Rain is raining.") also means "It's raining." I think hail and sleet are also possible subjects. Before the Turks converted to Islam (around 1500 I think), the main deity was Te\ngri ("tanr\i" in modern Turkish, meaning "deity"), a sky god. Funny letters: \"o o-umlaut pronounced as in German \ug "soft g" almost silent, voiced velar fricative sometimes just lengthens the preceding vowel. \i dotless i high back unrounded vowel, occurs in some varieties of Amer. "Yeucch!" \ng ng as in "sing" Stephen