Re: Color Terms

Sylvia Sotomayor <kelen@...> writes:

> I had a small epiphany regarding Kélen color terms. Currently in the lexicon,
> there are a number that have very similar meaning, as in:
> tiél    purple, lavender
> tásh    purple
>
> It occured to me that the Kélen have a rather complex color scheme where the
> name of the color changes according to what is being described. The way a Kélen
> person would describe it is that they have 4 different sets of color terms, 4
> being the sacred number of course. The 4 terms cover 4 domains and 9 colors. I
> will try to lay this out in a table format and hope that the tab settings in
> your browser/email-reader are the same:
[list of terms snipped]

Two questions:

1. How are the domains delimited against each other?  Which rules
determine
   which set of terms is used on which objects?

2. I wonder about the full palette of colour terms for people.  Do
people
   really come in such a variety of colours in your world?  Or do these
terms
   relate to face or body paintings common in the culture, or to the
clothes
   people wear?

> As to the color of little plastic chips, those would (probably) be:
> shé, ráél, nél, ló, málj, ún, tásh, éjká, ólná.
Why do they oscillate between the earth, water and sky domains, and why
in this particular way?

ObMyOwnConlang: Nur-ellen doesn't have a particularly "interesting" or
exotic system of colour terms, it is essentially the same as in
Sindarin.

So here are they:

black        morn
white        glan
grey         mit
red          karn
orange       kuln
yellow       maln
light green  kaln  (i.e. colour of grass)
dark green   leg   (i.e. colour of tree-leaves)
skyblue      elv
blue         lyn
purple       keln
brown        barn
pink, ruddy  kran`n
gold         lorin
silver       kelbrin
copper       gerin

I have not yet fixed any domain-specific terms.

All subject to further revision.

Jörg.