Colors in Dakota

[ROOD DAVID S]

The word "Txo" in Dakota/Lakota covers the whole part of the spectrum that
English divides into "blue" and "green".  This is very common around the
world.  To conform with English useage, some speakers of L/Dakota have
added descriptive terms to _txo_, just as English speakers distinguish
"sky blue" from "navy blue" (Russian has separate words for
approximately those two concepts).  Nature doesn't provide neat criteria
for division of the spectrum into sub-parts; languages have to do that,
and they don't all do it the same way.
	David

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Tue, 25 Mar 2003, Louis Garcia wrote:

> Can anyone tell me how or why the color green (To) is now the color blue? Ex: Watowi for the month of May.
> Also why sometimes you will see the color brown (gi) translated as yellow? Ex: Nakpagi for Yellow Ear.
> Toksta ake,
> Louie Garcia