I've noticed that the languages I study have slightly different words for colours than English, so they make divisions between colours where we wouldn't otherwise.
For two examples from Manx:
Glass and geayney - both these words mean green, but glass refers to green you find in nature (so grass and hills), whereas geayney refers to manmade green (so if you dyed your hair green or if you had a green car).
Jiarg and ruy - both these words refer to red, but jiarg is pretty much the only one you use, unless you're talking about someone's hair (Ta folt ruy ec Yamys - James has red hair) or an animal's colouring (Ushag Veg Ruy being a popular lullaby about a little red bird (a robin)). Jiarg is used in combination with other colours to give names to red's secondary colours; jiarg-gorrym, red-blue = purple; jiarg-bwee, red-yellow = orange; jiarg-bane, red-white = pink.
One last thing, to describe someone who is black, you wouldn't say dooiney doo ("black man"), but rather dooiney gorrym ("blue man"). So black people are blue in Manx.
So, what about your target language?
[link] [comments]
from Γειά σας | Languagelearning https://ift.tt/2P3fSPT
via Learn Online English Speaking
Comments
Post a Comment