Re: Moten's way of naming colours

>>         Well, as I said, here is the way we name colours in Moten.
>>
>>         Colours in Moten have no name by themselves. There is only the word
>'va':
>> colour, which can be used in compounds to name colours, after the colour of
>> some known objects.
The Tokana colour-term system is pretty boring:

        has     "white"
        kote    "black"
        sane    "red"
        lune    "blue"
        kulhe   "green"
        laite   "yellow"
        aihne   "gold, amber"
        lohne   "brown"
        hiem    "light grey, blue-grey"
        hemak   "dark grey"

These terms are mostly of unknown origin, except for "sane", which is
obviously related to "san" = "blood" (the connection to French "sang"
is purely accidental, I swear!).  Also, "laite" is probably related
to "lai" = "light, brilliance", and "lohne" is probably derived from
"lo-", an old root meaning "tree" (the modern word for tree is
"palahta").

(Also, any of you who are familiar with Tolkien's languages will
recognise "lune" as out-and-out plagiarism - one of the few examples
of such in Tokana.)

Matt.

------------------------------------
Matt Pearson
mpearson@ucla.edu
UCLA Linguistics Department
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1543
------------------------------------