Re: NATLANG: Colours

>> Yet, in very many language, _red_ translates literally as
>> _blood-color_
>
>  In Hungarian, the spectrum of "red" is divided into two groups: a
>deeper _vo:ro:s_ (lit. 'blood-like') and a more vivid _piros_ (lit.
>'aurora-like, dawn-like').
Ah, so "vörös" derives from "vér" - good to know that. But
what is the base form for "piros"? For "aurora" or "dawn"
I can only find "hajnal" in my (very limited) dictionaries.

In Turkish, there are two words for red, "kIrmIzI" and
"kIzIl", but AFAIK, "kIzIl" (bright/vivid red, vermilion,
'piros') is used as a subset of "kIrmIzI" (red in general).
The funny thing is that the original Turkic word for red
is the one that gave "kIzIl", while "kIrmIzI" is related
to English "crimson" (both coming from the name of the kermes
insect); that is, a specific name for dark red broadened its
meaning to include all of red while the former basic one for
all of red was reduced to the bright/vivid subset of it.

In my Spanish ideolect, I use "granate" ('garnet') as a common,
everyday colour term, there being shades which I would only
call "granate" because they aren't reddish enough to fit as
"rojo", nor yellowish enough to fit as "marrón", nor bluish
enough to fit as "violeta". Note that this "granate"-only area
is due basically to my ideolect using violet (bluish red-blue)
instead of the more general purple (any red-blue) as the basic
term (other ideolects may use "morado" for purple in general),
thus leaving the reddish and brownish purples (like puce)
outside the scope of "violeta" and free to join with the dark
reds and reddish browns into the separate category of "granate".
If pushed, most of "granate" I would accept to call "a dark
kind of red", but if similarly pushed I would also accept to
call most of "rosa" (pink) "a light kind of red", but even so
there would still be a fraction of "granate" and a fraction
of "rosa" (the more bluish kinds, like fuchsia, magenta, plum,
puce) which I would refuse to include as a kind of "rojo".
So it seems that in my ideolect, "granate" (dark red) has
developed into a 'secondarily basic' colour category at the
same level as "rosa" (light red). A similar thing happens
with "beis" (beige, light brown/yellow) in my ideolect, the
most insaturated kinds of it not fitting well into either
"marrón" or "amarillo". Summarizing in a chart:

--------------------------------------------------------
LIGHT .. Az1 .. Vi1 .. Rs ... Rs2 .. Rs3 .. Be ... Be1 .
VIVID .. Az ... Vi ... Rs1 .. Rj ... Na ... Na ... Am ..
DARK ... Az2 .. Vi2 .. Gr ... Gr1 .. Ma ... Ma ... Ma1 .
--------BLUE------------------RED-----------------YELLOW

Az azul (Az1: [azul] celeste - Az2: azul marino)
Vi violeta (Vi1: lila - Vi2: púrpura)
Gr granate (Gr1: granate, rojo oscuro)
Rs rosa (Rs1: fucsia, magenta - Rs2: rosa, rojo
........ claro - Rs3: [rosa] salmón)
Rj rojo
Na naranja
Ma marrón (Ma1: ocre)
Be beis (Be1: crema)
Am amarillo

Cheers,
Javier