nahuatl colors

[Magnus Pharao Hansen]

Ken otimosemilwitiwak, Dr. Sullivan

It is true that that is how Nahuatl is. The interesting thing is that
Nahuatl has apparently jettisoned most of the color vocabulary of
proto-Uto-Aztecan to become that way (If I am not mistaken the only Nahuatl
colour word that has a UA cognate is *ista*- which is cognate with PUA
*tosa), and furthermore that that is a very uncommon way for languages to be
cross linguistically. Kay and Berlins study shows that it is by far the most
common in the worlds languages to have terms that are exclusive for color.

Thanks for giving me the yellow corn word - I have always been wondering
whether there wasn't such a word out there - in a way its very beautiful
that nahuatl color terms are derived from food products in this way -
Hueyapan also has ya:wik "color of blue maize (ya:witl)".

Magnus


2009/11/11 John Sullivan, Ph.D. <idiez at me.com>

Piyali Magnus,
> But isnʻt that just the way Nahuatl is? How do you describe something in
> Nahuatl? You say that itʻs semblance is the result of having completed a
> certain action, i.e., chip:hua>chipa:huac or tetiya>tetic. And this last one
> is just an excuse for saying that it resembles some other noun. So there
> really arenʻt any adjectival roots in Nahuatl, except for maybe hueyi.
>  "co:z-" isnʻt just for color. [first of all I need to remark that in
> Huastecan Nahuatl co:ztic has a long "o"]. "co:ztzin" is a type of corn, so
> co:ztic just means that something has come to resembled that kind of corn
> (in itʻs yellowness). And yes, there is the intermediate form co:ztiya, "for
> something to yellow".
>  "co:cihui" means that a fruit is ripening and turning yellow
> (co:z[tli]-ihui).
> John
>
> John Sullivan, Ph.D.
> Professor of Nahua language and culture
> Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas
>
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