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Welsh (notable for these purposes in coming from a single root which is about 4k years old, and having branched off along with Gaelic and the other Brittonic la
by petewailes 11y ago
Welsh (notable for these purposes in coming from a single root which is about 4k years old, and having branched off along with Gaelic and the other Brittonic languages around a similar period), uses the same groupings. I'm not sure at what point they turn up, but they're currently:
black – du
white – gwyn
grey – llwyd
red – coch
yellow – melyn
blue – glas
green – gwyrdd
brown – gwinau (brown to auburn shades) or cochddu (brown to the dark reddish blacks)
purple – porffor (also cochlas, which is a reddish blue)
pink – pinc or gwyngoch (for white-ish reds or pale reds)
orange – oren or melyngoch (for yellowish reds; a slight evolution from the conjunction of melyn-coch)
I'd suspect that oren and pinc are more recent evolutions in the lexicon, with gwyngoch and the associated red spectrum names, and gwyngoch and its cousins more tightly defining those parts of the spectrum, rather than having an all encompassing grouping for them. That's assumption and not based on evidence beyond my own knowledge of British linguistic evolution though, so take it with a pinch of salt.
It'd be interesting to look at common Brittonic and its modern descendants though and see if and when they change, and whether that has broader implications, similar to the point on "wine-dark".
- 1wd 11y agoI know nothing about Welsh. With white - gwyn and red - coch, gwyngoch looks like it's basically "light red". Similarly melyngoch (with melyn=yellow) looks like it's basically "yellow-red", and a few others (cochddu, gwinau?) look "suspicious" as well. Would these be considered basic color terms [1]? Apparently the differente views have different definitions. [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Basic_color_terms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Basic_color_terms [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...
- petewailes 11y agoWelsh occasionally does things similar to German, where things end up squished together to make a new thing. Other examples would be Aberystwyth (aber - river mouth, Ystwyth - the river in question), rhagddodiad and olddodiad (prefix and suffix), trosgais (a converted try in rugby) and so on. So yes, it's a compounding of two other words, but that's kinda how it's done. Not entirely sure if that makes it an argument for or against what you're saying though.
- abrowne 11y agoI don't know if any language lacks compound words. Your first example is shard with English: (River) Dart + mouth -> Dartmouth (also Plymouth), Dart + moor -> Dartmoor.
- petewailes 11y agoThe difference is English compound words were historically actually separate words, which got compounded together through common usage. Brittanic and German style languages intentionally compound words to form new ones.
- 1wd 11y agoAh, interesting thanks. German has hellrot for example. (And dunkelrot, hellblau, dunkelblau, ... even blaugrün) They don't "count" as basic color terms though. https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/hellrot https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/hellrot https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/blaugr%C3%BCn https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/blaugr%C3%BCn
- abrowne 11y agoIt could also be a desire for linguistic purity: pinc may have been borrowed first but then someone though it wasn't "Welsh enough" so they coined (the rather logical) gwyngoch.