Colors in Dakota -Duta

[Rory M Larson]

>It sounds like the distinction is essentially one of what they call
>'register'.  Luta is preferred for more 'elevated' or 'special' contexts.
>Perhaps this is consistent with it arising from a metaphor for 'ripened,
>scarlet'?

I'd think it would also be consistent with it being an older
term.  Do we have any 'red' cognates to Dakotan /sha/ in other
branches of Siouan?

If luta/duta/nuta once included 'blue' as well as 'red', that
might help along the suggestion that the term once meant 'ripe',
since some berries ripen to blue or black or purple rather than
to red.


>I seem to recall that there were some interesting things in connection
>with 'red' terms in Siouan words for 'watermelon', which in Omaha-Ponca is
>sakka z^ide.

Hmm.  We have this as /sakka dhide/ in the Stabler-Swetland
dictionary, along with a /sakka dhide zi/ for 'cantaloup'.
I'd better check this with the speakers.


>Another interesting use of 'red' in OP is the clan name iNgdhez^ide,
>literally 'red excrement', said in Fletcher & LaFlesche to refer to the
>coloring of the excrement of buffalo calves.  When I first began to change
>the diapers of my kids I was struck by the bright coloring of a milkfed
>baby's excement, though I would have called in more 'yellow' in English
>terms, at least for a human's excrement.

Having once bottle fed bull calves cast out from a dairy
operation, I can confirm the color for bovines as well.
It may have even been a trifle on the orange side.  In
the absence of a basic color term for 'orange', it
could be described as either 'red' or 'yellow' in MVS.
This idea seems more promising, and less disappetizing,
than the alternatives of bloody stools, or counting the
afterbirth as a type of iNgdhe.

Rory