Re: Color system
| From: | Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, October 17, 2004, 15:16 |
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>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").
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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. :)