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All about the orange! | ||
Tags: Colors/Colours | Meaning of words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Rutabaga Bilingual Pentaglot Newbie Romania Joined 4929 days ago 27 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English*, Slovenian*, French, German, Russian Studies: Portuguese, Uzbek | Message 17 of 48 27 October 2011 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Bambara, spoken in Mali, the fruit is lenburuba (a lemon is lenburu, so orange is essentially a 'big lemon'). There is no true word for the color orange, at least to my knowledge. In Malinke, which is similar to Bambara, it is very similar, with orange the fruit being limunun). There, oranges are typically more green on the outside, so it makes sense that they wouldn't be the same word.
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| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5601 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes  | Message 18 of 48 28 October 2011 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Before the arrival of the orange at German markets, the word kreß, which Goethe still knew, was used. It is derived from the plant Tropaeolum.
There are not many orange objects in the natural world before the arrival of synthetic colours and safran: the setting sun, some berries and flowers maybe. Any more? So no urgent need for an expression. PS. The nearest term in Latin may be luteus (the one with the long u), derived from the herb lutum used for dyeing (not dying ;). Edited by Cabaire on 28 October 2011 at 12:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5175 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 19 of 48 28 October 2011 at 3:31am | IP Logged | ||
Interesting. Do you know how many true color words there are in Bambara? And do they follow the color evolutionary pattern as presented by Berlin and Kay? (The link is on page 1 in H.Computatralis' post. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Swahili conforms nicely to this pattern.) And if there is no word for the orange color in their languages, how would they describe what we perceive as orange? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5375 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 20 of 48 28 October 2011 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | ||
I would love to go to a land where oranges aren't orange. I'd be blown away. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4846 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 21 of 48 28 October 2011 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Icelandic, the colour is definitely named after the fruit. It's called "appelsínugulur" which translates into "orange-yellow" or "yellow as an orange". The fruit itself is called "appelsína".
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| Ketutar Triglot Newbie Sweden Joined 4785 days ago 20 posts - 31 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: French, Italian, Maltese | Message 22 of 48 30 October 2011 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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After studying Sámi I am questioning the universality of Berlin and Kay.
There is some data insinuating that in Finno-Ugric languages blue was one of the first "real" color names, and that brown arrived before or about the same time as red. As mentioned, orange the fruit is "appelsiini" (Chinese apple - we got it from the German languages as well, either from German or Swedish) and the color is "oranssi". Combination of red and yellow was used to describe the orange shades before this word. I haven't been able to find the color in Sámi dictionary, so perhaps it's something similar there too. The fruit is appelsiidna. In Estonian: oranzh - apelsin In Albanian both the fruit and color is "portokalli" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5018 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 23 of 48 30 October 2011 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Bengali the colour orange is koamla and the fruit is called koamla leyboo (orange lemon).
On an interesting note, the colour orange is associated with royalty in (The Kingdom of) The Netherlands, quite similar to how purple is perceived elsewhere. Maybe, its because the House of Orange rules there and the Prince of Orange is the heir-apparent, etc. Thats trivia for you, my fellow global citizens. :) Cheers, Napoleon 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5455 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 24 of 48 30 October 2011 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | ||
Difficult in Norwegian too. Although the official spelling is "oransje", I think most people both say and spell it without "e" at the end: "oransj". I think most people would say "et oransjt hus", not "et oransje hus" (the form prescribed by the dictionaries). And it is usually pronounced as if it was written "orangsj". Edited by tractor on 30 October 2011 at 8:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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