At 09:16 PM 5/2/2003 +0100, you wrote:
The Latin-derived languages in South Europe still use descendants of
"dexter" and "sinister"; in Italian it's "destro" and "sinistro" I
believe; in Spanish "derecho" and "izquierdo" (had to look that one up in
the tourist dictionary); and in French "droit" and "gauche". It is
interesting (well I think so anyway ;-)) that "gauche" is a word in
English to mean awkward or even naive.
Chris
What do they know? None of them play baseball. ;-)
I was in a castle once somewhere in England where the spiral staircase
corkscrewed opposite the usual direction because by heredity the inhabiting
family were mostly lefties. I hadn't realized that spiral staircases were
defensive constructs, designed for sword-play. Silly me. Very interesting.
You don't happen to know the castle (I think it was a castle), do you? I'm
guessing it was in Yorkshire or elsewhere up north.
Joel W.
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