Re: Color Terms

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:

                earth:          water:          sky:            people:
black:          shé,            ástá,           ástá,           shé.
white:          ráél,           ló,             ló,             célná.
red:            nél,            síw,            síw,            súr.
yellow:         núál,           ló,             ló,             ló.
green:          málj,           há,             cór,            ílpá.
blue:           ún,             ún,             cór,            tiél.
purple/pink:    tásh,           tásh,           néún,           tiél.
brown:          éjká,           wúl,            ólná,           énéj.
grey:           ráél,           ló,             ólná,           ráél/célná*.

*ráél is also considered the color of death, so it is only used for signs of
extreme old age or sickness.

As to the color of little plastic chips, those would (probably) be:
shé, ráél, nél, ló, málj, ún, tásh, éjká, ólná.

Thanks for listening,
Sylvia

--
Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com
http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/
from Caldera 2.4 Linux