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Georgian is really interesting. Very few cognates for non-modern words. Colors in Georgian are fun: you don't have "brown", you have "coffee-color" (ყავისფერი /
by CGamesPlay 10mo ago
Georgian is really interesting. Very few cognates for non-modern words. Colors in Georgian are fun: you don't have "brown", you have "coffee-color" (ყავისფერი / ყავის ფერი); you don't have "light blue", you have "sky-color" (ცისფერი / ცის ფერი).
- SanjayMehta 10mo agoThere are several Hindi words for brown, my favourite is "Badami" - almond-like. My grandfather used "laal" which is usually used for red. I used to wonder if he was colour blind.
- leephillips 10mo agoHe might have been unusually color aware, as brown is a type of red.
- cyberax 10mo ago> "coffee-color" The Russian word for "brown" is literally "cinnamon-colored" ("коричневый"). And the Chinese language just uses the literal "coffee-colored" phrase (咖啡色).
- d_silin 10mo agoYou can also use "кофейный" (coffee-coloured) as synonym for "brown".
- koakuma-chan 10mo agoThat wouldn't be natural though. You would never describe, say, pants, as "coffee-coloured" in Russian.
- d_silin 10mo agoIt would make your Russian more posh, eccentric or sophisticated, depending on the context, but not necessary unnatural.
- galkk 10mo agoБрюки цвета кофе is natural in Russian. Pretentious, but still natural.
- koakuma-chan 10mo ago"Брюки цвета кофе" ("pants of coffee color") is natural, "коричневые брюки" ("brown pants") is natural, but "кофейные брюки" is not. In fact the latter would likely be interpreted as "coffee pants" or "pants made out of coffee."
- d_silin 10mo ago"кофейного цвета брюки" is acceptable too.
- koakuma-chan 10mo agoI admit that. I also realize that tguvot is actually arguing in my favor, as he said that coffee color is distinct from brown, and therefore the inference is that they aren't synonymous. I would summarize that they are conceptually different, as "brown" is a real color, whereas "coffee color" is a marketing color.
- tguvot 10mo ago"кофейные брюки" is totally ok. everybody will understand it. it's just the way the russian language is. you can abuse it, you can come up with words that do not really exist in language and make no sense, yet, everybody will understand what you meant to say
- koakuma-chan 10mo ago> "кофейные брюки" is totally ok. everybody will understand it. If the context is clothes, people would likely be able to guess, sure. But consider another example "кофейная чашка" ("a coffee mug"). In this context, it would most certainly be interpreted as "a mug for coffee" and not as "a coffee-coloured mug." In other words, you must include the word "цвет" ("color") for it to be correct and unambiguous. > it's just the way the russian language is. you can abuse it, you can come up with words that do not really exist in language and make no sense, yet, everybody will understand what you meant to say I don't think this is unique to Russian. I'm sure you can do the same in English and Japanese at least.
- tguvot 10mo agoactually you will. "coffee color" it's distinct from brown. And then there is also "coffee with milk" color. Won't be surprised if there is "pumpkin latte" color nowdays.
- koakuma-chan 10mo agoUh huh. Don't forget "aliceblue" and "rebeccapurple." But seriously, those are just arbitrary marketing aliases, aren't they. I remember e-shopping for sneakers, and every brand's "off-white" was a different color.
- tguvot 10mo agoActually brown in russian it's "bark-colored". bark = кора. Корица (cinnamon) is diminutive
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- ku-man 10mo ago[dead]
- inkyoto 10mo agoColours are fun in many languages. For instance, Japanese and Vietnamese do not differentiate between blue and green and require context specific clarification, e.g «traffic light blue-green».
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- rvrs 10mo agoJapanese has a word for green now 緑 (midori). Traffic lights use the word for blue for historical reasons
- nephihaha 10mo agoCeltic languages, and I believe Mayan, had a similar thing going on with blue and green. A lot of languages never distinguished orange from yellow really either.
- cryptoegorophy 10mo agoI believe polish is similar. They have “sky color” which is pretty cool!
- selcuka 10mo ago> you don't have "brown", you have "coffee-color" It's coffee-colour (kahverengi) in Turkish as well, but I don't find it interesting. The English word "orange" is after a fruit as well (which is also the same in Turkish: "portakal rengi", or "turuncu").
- lordgrenville 10mo agoSky-colour makes sense, but coffee drinking only goes back to the 15th century or so. Did Georgians not have a word for this colour before then?!
- adrian_b 10mo agoThere have been many authors who have claimed about various old languages that they lacked words for some colors, and "brown" is one of the most frequent colors about which such claims have been made. I believe that most such claims, if not all, were wrong. The problem is that when reading an ancient text in which colors are mentioned it is very difficult to guess which is the color that is meant by some word and it frequently is difficult to even be sure that the word refers to a color and not to some other kind of property of an object. There are very rare cases when the text says something like "this object is X like blood", so you can infer that X = "red", or "this object is Y like the sky", so you can infer that Y = "blue". Brown is a color for which it is even rarer to find suitable comparisons in a text, from which the color can be inferred, than for colors like red, green or blue, which are typically compared to blood, grass and sky. So when various authors have claimed that there was no word for "brown" in some old language, the truth was that they just were unable to find any word whose meaning could be determined with certainty to be "brown", in the preserved texts, even if there were plenty of words that most likely meant "brown". Moreover, in nature there are many shades of brown, lighter or darker, more reddish or more yellowish, which is why in many languages there are multiple words for brown, which are derived from various things that have that particular shade of brown, e.g. words that mean coffee-brown, chestnut-brown, dry-earth brown, brown like the fur of certain animals, etc. Such words that identify a particular shade with reference to a familiar object have been renewed from time to time, in function of which objects have become more familiar or less familiar. After coffee became a very popular beverage, in many languages it has replaced whatever reference object was previously used for a dark brown. As an example, many have claimed that Ancient Greek had no word for "brown". However, when reading Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, i.e. the oldest Greek texts except for the Mycenaean tablets, there already are a lot of places where there is no doubt that "brown" was meant by the word "aithono-". This is an adjective derived from the verb "to burn", and most dictionaries say that it means "burning". However, in the actual texts there are plenty of places where it does not mean "burning", but it means "burnt", more precisely "having the color of burnt wood", i.e. brown. This is not surprising. Another word used in the same way is "anthrakos", which can be used either for an object red like a burning ember (e.g. for red garnets or rubies) or for an object black like an extinguished ember (e.g. for charcoal or coal).