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All about the orange!

 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room Post Reply
48 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5


jeff_lindqvist
Diglot
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SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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 Message 41 of 48
01 November 2011 at 8:07pm | IP Logged 
In the recently published book "Ljust och fräscht" (~"Bright and fresh"), the authors (comedians Fredrik Lindström and Henrik Schyffert) draw attention to Swedish interior design, including colour tables with shades of white such as Stockholm white, tofu white, dandruff, sneaker, basin, extension cord...
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Marc Frisch
Heptaglot
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Germany
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 Message 42 of 48
02 November 2011 at 9:46pm | IP Logged 
strikingstar wrote:

"Portokalli" = Portugal. It refers to Portugal's status as the main importer of oranges
from East to West around the 16th century. This seems to suggest that oranges made
their way from China/India to Portugal before spreading East again towards the
Caucusus. Portugal likely accomplished this with their maritime prowess as well as the
discovery of a sea route between East and West via the Cape of Good Hope. Would also
seem to suggest that few (or no) oranges were actively traded along the Silk Road.


I know that Arabic took this word directly from Portuguese and that Turkish loaned it from Arabic. Because of the geographical proximity, I think it's very likely that it spread from Turkish to Greek, Albanian, and Georgian (and probably some other languages as well).

By the way, this thread is awesome!

Edited by Marc Frisch on 02 November 2011 at 9:47pm

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Marc Frisch
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Germany
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Studies: Persian, Tamil

 
 Message 43 of 48
02 November 2011 at 9:50pm | IP Logged 
H.Computatralis wrote:
Middle English orenge, orange, from Old French pome orenge 'Persian orange', literally 'orange apple', influenced by Old Provençal auranja and calqued from Old Italian melarancio, melarancia, compound of mela 'apple' and (n)arancia 'orange', from Arabic نارنج (nāranj), from Persian نارنگ (nārang), from Sanskrit नारङ्ग (nāraṅga, “orange tree”), from Dravidian (cf. Tamil nartankāy, compound of நரந்தம் (narantam) 'fragrance' and காய் (kāy) 'fruit'; also Telugu nāraṅgamu, Malayam narakam, Kannada naranga).


This is so incredible: I'm studying Tamil right now and it's so interesting to see how a Tamil (or Dravidian) word has travelled through virtually all the languages I'm interested in!
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strikingstar
Bilingual Tetraglot
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United States
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Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili
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 Message 44 of 48
03 November 2011 at 7:57pm | IP Logged 
Marc Frisch wrote:
strikingstar wrote:

"Portokalli" = Portugal. It refers to Portugal's status as the main importer of oranges
from East to West around the 16th century. This seems to suggest that oranges made
their way from China/India to Portugal before spreading East again towards the
Caucusus. Portugal likely accomplished this with their maritime prowess as well as the
discovery of a sea route between East and West via the Cape of Good Hope. Would also
seem to suggest that few (or no) oranges were actively traded along the Silk Road.


I know that Arabic took this word directly from Portuguese and that Turkish loaned it
from Arabic. Because of the geographical proximity, I think it's very likely that it
spread from Turkish to Greek, Albanian, and Georgian (and probably some other languages
as well).

By the way, this thread is awesome!


That makes more sense. Afterall most of the countries between Portugal and the Caucusus
did not adopt a variation of "Portokalli" as the name for the fruit. I assume
Portuguese vessels stopped somewhere along the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea on the
way back to Europe and introduced the oranges to the Arabs. The orange then spread
towards Turkey and Eastern Europe from there.
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Rutabaga
Bilingual Pentaglot
Newbie
Romania
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Speaks: English*, Slovenian*, French, German, Russian
Studies: Portuguese, Uzbek

 
 Message 45 of 48
05 November 2011 at 11:19am | IP Logged 
strikingstar wrote:



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?


You know, I'm not entirely sure how many true color words there are. I was never able to get a definitive answer. According to my language book, older speakers of the language out in the village refer to things as being only dark and light (ie. black and white, which are finman and jeeman). However, there seems to be a true word for red: bilenman. I think that follows the pattern, right? There are words to describe other colors, but they're all along the lines of 'the color of [object]'. For example, yellow is neremuguman, where neremugu is the yellow powder of the plant nere, and green is binkeneman, where bin means grass and kene means healthy or alive. I tried to find out more about this when I was learning the colours, but found that most people just referred to the colors in French. In fact, a whole discussion ensued when my friend and I tried to find out the words for pink and orange.
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zecchino1991
Senior Member
United States
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Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew, Russian, Arabic (Written), Romanian, Icelandic, Georgian

 
 Message 46 of 48
09 January 2012 at 10:42pm | IP Logged 
In Hebrew it's "tapuz" for the fruit and "katom" for the color. I don't know the origin of the color word, though.
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kyknos
Triglot
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Czech Republic
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Speaks: Slovak, Czech*, English
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 Message 47 of 48
09 January 2012 at 11:04pm | IP Logged 
stelingo wrote:
In Czech orange (fruit) is pomeranč and the colour pomerančový.


No, in Czech the color is "oranžová", the fruit is indeed "pomeranč"
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Monox D. I-Fly
Senior Member
Indonesia
monoxdifly.iopc.us
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Speaks: Indonesian*

 
 Message 48 of 48
22 December 2015 at 6:02pm | IP Logged 
In Indonesia, the color orange is either "oranye" for the loan word or "jingga" for the native word while the fruit orange is "jeruk".

On the other hand, the Indonesian for "cacao" and "brown" are both "cokelat" leading to a riddle changes the answer if translated to English.

English:
What fruit has the same name as its color? Orange.

Indonesia:
Buah apa yang namanya sama dengan warnanya? (What fruit has the same name as its color?) Cokelat (Cacao/Brown).


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