Re: NATLANG: Colours

At the moment I can't see a correspondance to 'cerven'
in Russian, but I can make further inquiry. Maybe
something to do with "chereshnja" (orthograph not
guaranteed), meaning "cherry" ?

I already checked further about "krasnyj" and
"krasivyj" in Russian. There were actually related,
and maybe synonyms, in the XIVth century. Russian
still have words like:
- prekrasnyj, which doesn't mean "very red" as one
could think, but "very beautiful"
- krasit', which doesn't mean "to make red", but "to
decorate"

As I understand, the meaning "beautiful" comes from
this idea of "krasit'". Maybe because women used to
"krasit'" themselves with red pigments ? There seems
to be an expression "krasnaja devitsa", meaning, not
"a red young girl", but "a beautiful young girl".
Maybe just a question of make-up.

As to the etymology of the root, my dictionary
mentions 2 theories, one about a Norse word "hros"
(accent on "o"), and the other one about a Baltic word
"karsh", or something like that, but I haven't the
dictionary at hand just now, and I should better try
translating the whole article and post it later.

--- Tommie L Powell <tommiepowell@...> wrote:
> Philippe Caquant (replying to me) wrote:
> > Yes, I think that Russian "krasnyj" (red) and
> > "krasivyj" (beautiful), "krasota" (beauty) were
> > related in the past, at least I have read
> something
> > like that somewhere...
>
> The Czech word for beautiful is "krasn_" (where
> "_" denotes the adjective's declension's ending).
> And its adverbial form (meaning nice/nicely) is
> "krasne" (where the 'e' has a hacek).
>
> Their word for red is "cerven_" (where 'c' has a
> hacek).  Does Russian have any related word?

=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


	
		
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