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Re: Color system

From:Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...>
Date:Sunday, October 17, 2004, 15:16
>I think they would have probably a lot of base words all meaning "green" to >describe all the different shades of green they're exposed to every day >(just like the eskimos have lots of words which all mean "snow"). > > >
This is an urban legend... or rather, its true but not in the way you think. Spanish has two words for man, which might seem odd at first, but: hombre man hombrón hombre-on big man -on is a productive augmentive affix in Spanish. Eskimo has many words for snow in the same way... it has a very rich derivational morphology. :)