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To slightly throw a spanner in the works, the word for an egg yolk in Thai is "ไข่แดง" (kai daeng). ไข่ = egg, แดง = red. I've no idea why they use red here. T
by shric 10y ago
To slightly throw a spanner in the works, the word for an egg yolk in Thai is "ไข่แดง" (kai daeng). ไข่ = egg, แดง = red. I've no idea why they use red here.
This isn't a color disagreement. The Thai word for red is otherwise identical to the red English speakers know of, and there are other words for the actual colors of yolks (i.e. yellow or orange) and Thai chickens don't produce red yolks :(
- geomark 10y agoI'm not so sure. Thais call things แดง that don't look red to me. The egg yolks you mentioned are one of them. Brown dogs are another. People with dark complexion are another (if really dark they call them เขียง = green).
- Latty 10y agoIt may well be that in the past, there was no separate word for yellow or orange, they were just considered shades of red. So people used 'red'. Then later, people felt enough need to create more nuanced terms. In a similar way, if I remember correctly, Apple used to be the English word for all fruit[1]. We later added specific words for more fruits, and Apple only remains as the name of a single fruit - however, we still have 'Pineapples', which gained the name when apple was a generic fruit moniker. Apparently it's common for blue and green to be clumped together - green (midori) is a surprisingly recent term in Japanese, so lots of green things are referred to as blue (aoi) because of traditional usage - including the green light on traffic lights, apparently.[2] [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apple#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apple#Etymology [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language#Japanese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction...
- _ZeD_ 10y agoWell, in italian, conversely, the egg parts are "bianco" (white) and "rosso" (red).