Re: Mauve and a related conlang question

I wrote:
>
>I got to confess I haven't spent much tought on what colour terms Tairezazh
>ought to have. I simply invented them as I've needed them, which've
>resulted
>in the following basic colour terms:
>
>sasht    "red"
>mek      "yellow"
>tadz     "green"
>skeiv    "blue"
>
>paugz    "black"
>thost    "white"
>
>Likely, there'll be more. I read somewhere that the number of basic colour
>terms tends to increase with the technological sophistication of the
>society. If that's true, I guess the Tairezans should have a bunchload of
>basic colour terms.
The Steianans, linguistically if not genetically the cousins of the
Tairezans, somewhat unsurprisingly use the same terms, altho' in slightly
different forms:

sashsh "red"
mek    "yellow"
tadz   "green"
skiv   "blue"
pougz  "black"
soss   "white"

The adherents of Steiana's two main political blocs* are traditionally
refered to as the _pougzen_ ['pOUgzn=] "blacks" and the _sosten_ ['sOstn=]
"whites". Among the things they disagree on is spelling; the _pougzen_ want
a etymological spelling that emphasizes the relationship with Tairezan and
their common ancestor Xaláishu, whereas the _sosten_ want a phonetic
spelling (the current spelling, reflected in the romanization above, is
mainly _soss_, with some compromises to satisfy moderate _pougzen_). One
word that can get unrecognizable in different spelling schemes is [sOs(:)]
"white" itself - extreme _pougzen_ would want to spell it _thost_ (/T/ and
/s/ having merged, the final /t/ popping up in derivatives like _sosten_),
while extreme _sosten_ would want to spell it _sos_ (only dialectal speakers
distinguish long and short consonants anymore). Pougzen will always remember
to point out that if the spelling _sos_ was adopted, you couldn't tell if
the nominalized pl would be _sosten_, _sossen_ ['sOsn=] or _sozen_ ['sOzn=].
Because of this, _sozen_ is sometimes used as a derogative variant of
_sosten_. The current spelling _soss_ (in the native script the final |s|
isn't doubled, but has a length-mark above it) is a kind of compromise - but
you still can't tell if the pl ought to be _sosten_ or _sossen_ ...

* These two bigs blocs has been around for couple millennia, the parties and
organizations that form them come and go every generation or so.

                                                           Andreas

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