Hang on a moment - yes to the always-over-cooked stuff about a hundred words for rain or snow or whatever, but if two languages are spoken in two very different landscapes, they’re clearly going to do different descriptive jobs, aren’t they? For example, there’s at least one Aboriginal language where they have no words for ‘left’ or ‘right’, they just always use points of the compass - that’s a very different kind of interaction with the landscape to what we’re used to…
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That’s a fair enough point, but firstly by ‘a certain geography’ I meant ‘fixed’ in the sense of ‘shared’. Of course Gaelic is going to be more comfortable describing rain-sodden moorland than an Australian desert language, but then so is Scots. And the Aboriginal language to which you refer may be different (and fascinating, and many other things) at describing its environment, but better than the Aboriginal language next door?
I think that’s the sound of goalposts being dragged off the park to an entirely different pitch…
I suspect I’d be inclined to agree that two languages that have lived side-by-side for a long time are likely to have more points in common than otherwise… 
Considering that the original discussion was about Gaelic and Scots, I think that’s a little bit unfair…
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Mind you, plenty of indo-European languages use words derived from “left” and “right” for north and south (Welsh being one of the most obvious, but they are hidden in the etymology there in a lot of them. I’m sure there’s a thread or two round here discussing that…)
Other way round of course, so just pointing it out out of interest!
Edit - Ah, here we are for anyone interested…
http://forum.saysomethingin.com/t/etymology-random-questions-and-thoughts
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And apparently (according to the GPC) “broga” does come from the English. In fact, “ffroga” is recorded in Welsh before “broga”.
The “ff” to “b” change is a bit of an odd one (“f” to “b” or “m” is perfectly understandable and common)* but “ff” seems to be a bit of a wild card sometimes! (Ffebruar to chwefror etc!)
- that is, the sound represented in Welsh by “f”, and similarly with “ff”.s
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I seem to remember that on some small island cultures (Easter Island?) “sea ward” and “landward” are used in the same way. Towards or away from the sea depending where you are standing instead of left or right.
Could be wrong, though.
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I’m sure there are fields within linguistics that focus entirely on lexicon and geography, as well as accent/intonation and geography. Although I don’t (yet) agree with you, you’ve ignited my interest and I’ve been reading about the topic of languages and geography since I read your comment this morning. Diolch!
Diolch yn fawr iawn. I had put the ‘de’ = right/South thing down to coincidence but I can see the connection, yes.
For some reason, I can’t open the links you provided to the Etymology thread so please forgive me if I’m asking something that has already been discussed in that thread.
What’s the link between ‘Gogledd’ and ‘left’?
Is it more common for the word for ‘South’ to be the same as ‘Right’ in some languages than it is for the word ‘Left’ to mean ‘North’?
This reminds me of something I read. The Proto-Indo-Europeans didn’t even have a word that means’ left’. They only had something like ‘decs’ to convey ‘right’ but no word to convey the opposite of ‘decs’. I wonder if this was the same for ‘South and North’ then? Hard to imagine. I’ll dig around, but if someone can enlighten me on this, I’d be interested to know more about the connections that Owain discussed above.
Also, if the Welsh word ‘de’ means right/dextrous/deft/good, and it also means ‘South’, and the Welsh word ‘chwith’ means left/awkard/strange/sinister, and if there’s a link between ‘Gogledd’ and ‘chwith’ (of which I don’t know about yet), does this mean that people used to view the South as being ‘good and right’ and the North as being ‘sinister’?
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@Mererid “Cledd” is an old Welsh word for “left”, apparently occurring in the oldest texts and related to Middle Breton “cleiz”, Cornish “cledh” and old Irish “cle”.
Thus when looking towards the “rising”, “dwyrain”, north is to the “go+cledd”.
And the west is could be towards the “golleuin”, the oldest form of “gorllewin”, “go+lleu +(in)?”, towards the twilight, though this is less straightforward.
Mind you, similar to the way “west” is ultimately related to “vesper”.
My limited research seems to imply that the etymological connections between “north” and “left” are more common than those between “right” and “south”, but that is simply an impression not to be relied on. The real answer is I don’t know.
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Fabulous - diolch for that explanation.
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Now, there is a clear connection in English between ‘right’ and… er… right (correct)!! Children were encouraged to use the ‘right’ hand. As for directions, wouldn’t you tend to find that north was ‘to winter’ or ‘to cold’ and south ‘to summer’ or ‘to warm’, and as you notice, east and west to rising and setting of the sun!! (South could be ‘to light’ and north ‘to dark’ also!!).
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Ooh, even if you’re wrong, I’m going to believe it until further notice, because it’s so lovely it ought to be real…
I didn’t know that - thank you Stella!
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And I see Max Vasmer’s etymological dictionary agrees with you - you are on safe ground, Stella!! 
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Thank you! I was actually afraid that I was falling victim of the fashion to find those “common Indoeuropean” roots even when there’s no trace of them, in truth. Etymology’s such a shaky ground - I remember at high school in Italy we did a fascinating lesson on the medieval etymology and its passion for finding moralistic didactic roots for Latin words:)
But it’s very pleasant to know that Welsh and Russian, being so very different, share a word:)
They share many… зима / gaeaf is one of my favourites:)
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Oh, this is beautiful! Thank you very much, I didn’t know that:)
True, but it does seem that “ffroga” and thence the slightly odd change to “broga” come ultimately from English- according to the geiriadur prifysgol Cymru, anyway.
Very interesting info though!
“Etymology’s such a shaky ground”
And unfortunately, Edward Lhuyd’s Archaeologica Britainnica is often overlooked as a trailblazer in this sort of thing. Taking etymology to a scientific ground. But it only dealt with “celtic” languages (a term he introduced). Etymological fields seem to sometimes know little of Welsh, which makes me wonder how much the wider field really knows of any minor language, but that is another topic!
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That is so cool.