Fellow Shadow Watchers. Some time ago I requested List members to send me the word/s for 'sundial' in as many languages as possible with the promise that I would publish the result via the List when complete - I was unaware of the list already prepared by Daniel Roth at the time.
An unedited summary of the various contributions is given below which refers to but excludes the images in Chinese and Arabic caligraphy although I can forward the latter on request. Due to formatting differences of emailing software I apologise for any such errors which may have arisen as a result. The names of contributors are omitted but their essential supplementary notes have been included. Many Thanks to all offered their help. Tony Moss. ************************************************** In Portuguese "sundial" is "relógio de sol". Please, pay attention to the "o" after the "l" to make sure it is accented with an accute accent. My Hindi dictionaries give 'dhupghadi' (literally 'sun clock'). A more accurate, but typographically more obtuse rendering would be: dhuupghaDii (using capitalisation to indicate retroflexion...) In Afrikaans its called "Sonwyser", almost like in Dutch, as Dutch is one of Afrikaans' originating languages. Let me be the first with the Finnish: aurinkokello. Which, not surprisingly, is literally sun(aurinko) clock(kello) Slunecni hodiny - Czech Sonnenuhr - German means the same thing - "sun clock" One more information: "Relógio de Sol" can also be called "Relógio Solar". To me this second form is a little more sophiscated (just a little bit). In Mexico people know the sundial as: Reloj de Sol or reloj solar There are other words not popular: Horologio (orologio in italian, horologium and solarium in Latin) Cuadrante (cadran solaire in french) In Spanish "sundial" is "Reloj de sol". Another more controversial word exists "Cuadrante Solar". I did not mention this before, but in some (very rare) instances you can also find "quadrante solar" in Portuguese. My guess is that this is a mere copy of the way the French call it. I think unless you are an accomplished snob you would never use "quadrante solar" in place of "relógio solar" (or, more commonly, "relógio de sol"). To translate: sundial sundials Dutch: zonnewijzer zonnewijzers A remark to the German word: German: Sonnenuhr Sonnenuhren always with capital S. In Spanish (Mexico) we sometimes also use the word RELOJ SOLAR instead of RELOJ DE SOL. Both are correct. Of course in French the term is "cadran solaire" In Japanese the term is " hidokei", as the sundial links owned by Mr. Daniel Roth. "hidokei" means "sun clock". "hi" is the sun. "dokei" is to measure time or a time measuring instrument. In Chinese, it is called Ri Gui. Ri means sun. Gui means a kind of tool to measure something. in my dialect (venetians---Venice italy) we *could* say "reogio de sol" and in ancient version "relogio de sol" Translation in western alphabet : - modern Arabic Language Sundial = sa'a shamsiyya - medieval Arabic L Horizontal Sundial = rukhama (lit. marble) or basita (lit. flat) Vertical Sundial = munharifa. i just want to specify that we (I mean venetians...) *could* say "reogio de sol", but usually everybody in Italy (you surely know...), call sundials "meridiane" or "quadranti solari". In my dialect we usually say "meridiane". Venetians word "Reogio" means literaly *clock* in english and "reogio de sol" could be traslate into english "clock made by the sun". I was looking for something completely different a while back and chanced upon Winslow's Tamil & English Dictionary. Unfortunately it is only Tamil-to-English. But I made a fruitful guess, dredged up my rusty Tamil and found it. In my pedantic transliteration it is: suuriiya kaDii-haaram. A less accurate but more graceful rendition would be: suriya kadiharam. (lit. sun clock).
