North, East, South, West in Different Languages: Cardinal Directions

Four words every language needs

North, east, south and west are among the few words that almost every language has in its own form, and the tables show how unevenly they travel. English north, east, south and west are Germanic words, and they spread far: Dutch Noord, Oost, Zuid, West, Swedish Norr, Öster, Söder, Väster, Tok Pisin Not, Ist, Saut, West. The Romance languages took them over too, so French and Spanish say Nord or Norte where Latin had Septentrio, and Est or Este where Latin had Oriens.¹ Latin itself, Septentrio, Oriens, Meridies and Occidens, survives in the table almost alone.

East and west are often named after the sun. Latin Oriens and Occidens are the rising and the setting; Indonesian and Malay Timur and Barat sit beside Utara and Selatan, and the same words combine with laut, sea, to give the intermediate directions.¹ Tagalog has its own set, Hilaga, Silangan, Timog and Kanluran for north, east, south and west, and Hawaiian ʻĀkau, Hikina, Hema and Komohana.

Chinese and Japanese share the four characters 北, 東, 南 and 西, read běi, dōng, nán and xī in Chinese and kita, higashi, minami and nishi in Japanese; Korean writes 북, 동, 남 and 서. Hebrew צפון (ʦəfōn), מזרח (mizraḥ), דרום (dərōm) and מערב (maʿaraṿ) return in Yiddish, and Arabic شمال (šimāl), شرق (šarq), جنوب (ǧanūb) and غرب (ġarb) in Persian, which lists them next to the Persian words خاور (xâvar) and باختر (bâxtar) for east and west.

Each family has its own table, from the Germanic languages to the constructed ones. Languages that use more than one script, among them Serbian, Bosnian, Kazakh, Uzbek and Moldovan, have a row for each script. Where a language has two words for one direction, as Portuguese has Leste and Este for east, both stand in the cell, separated by a semicolon.