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Weird little color system

From:Jeffrey Henning <jeffrey@...>
Date:Friday, August 6, 2004, 5:15
I came up with a weird little color system for Dublex-.  There are only four
core color words:

ner [From Italian 'nero', from Latin 'niger', extant in Romance (Spanish,
Portuguese, Esperanto, Novial, et al).]  black

run [From Hindi /arun/, with initial /r-/ in English 'red' & 'rouge',
Spanish 'rojo', German 'rot', Dutch 'rood', Italian 'rosso', Esperanto
'rug^a', Novial 'red', et al.]  red

nil [From Sanskrit /nila-/, "indigo, dark blue", extant in Arabic 'nil',
Bengali = 'niil', English 'anil', Hindi 'niilaa', Indonesian 'nila', Malay
'nila', Papago 'anihl', Portuguese 'anil', Panjabi 'nilla', Persian 'nil',
Spanish 'añil', Swahili 'nili', Tagalog 'anyil' and Urdu 'nil'.]  blue

jel [From Russian /jelt/, reinforced by pattern of /y/ being borrowed as /j/
from English 'yellow', Italian 'giallo'.]  yellow


Combining these with each other and with two affixes (_duls_, a diminutive,
and _con_, "opposite"), there are 26 derived colors.

nerner: coal black, ebony, jet black, pitch black, sable, soot black
nerrun: dark red
nernil: dark blue, navy blue
nerjel: amber, gold

runner: charcoal gray, oxford gray
runrun: cardinal, carmine
runnil: violet, reddish blue
runjel: orange, saffron

nilner: iron blue, steel gray, Davy's gray
nilrun: purple, reddish purple, royal purple
nilnil: ultramarine
niljel: green, canary yellow

jelner: ash gray, silver
jelrun: orange, reddish orange
jelnil: green, greenish blue, aquamarine, turquoise, cobalt blue, peacock blue
jeljel: gamboge, lemon yellow

dulsner: gray
dulsrun: pink
dulsnil: azure, cerulean, sapphire, lazuline, sky-blue
dulsjel: brown, brownness

conner: white

The word _conner_ carries on the Dublex tradition of turning the tables (the
word for "left" is core but "right" is derived).

The interesting thing about this system for the English speaker is that the
concepts of "green" and "orange" are each split into two.  For instance, the
language doesn't have a word for the full continuum of "green" but has words
for "blueish yellow -> canary yellow" (_niljel_) and for "yellowish blue ->
aquamarine" (_jelnil_).

What's especially weird is that green is my favorite color!  Or should I
say, that _niljel_ and _jelnil_ are my favorite colors?

Best regards,

Jeffrey

Reply

Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>