Cherokee term for 'china clay'

[A.W. Tüting]

John,
thanks for your answer.
I actually was a bit hesitant about the 'colour' issue somewhat 
expecting your objections ;-) yet, I don't think that - within a 
certain period of time according to our context here - there are 
peoples with languages actually lacking words for basic colours so 
there'd be need for loans from a totally different language (e.g. like 
Chinese). This, of course, doesn't mean that such terms don't change 
within one language or related languages.

 >  Consider German blau, English blue, French bleu.  <

This goes back to mhg. bla(wes), ohg. and os. blao, g. blewa etc., 
maybe even l. flavus (cf. kymr. blawr).

 >  Or consider that terms for 'white' have not been particularly stable 
in Italic/Romance languages over the past 2000 years or so. <

My point wasn't that they aren't underlying changes, the more when new 
(daughter) languages are forming out (of certain dialects, military 
jargons etc.). One example I have in mind is Romanian 
_albastru/albastrã_ for 'blue', or Spanish _colorado_, _tinto_ for 
'red'.

BTW, Lakota _ska_ vs. _saN_ somehow is 'mirrored' in Chinese bai2 vs. 
su4 (the latter meaning 'natural white', plain, vegetarian).

For who's interested in, here's a Cherokee word list online:
http://www.wehali.com/tsalagi/index.cfm

Alfred


Am 13.07.2006 um 10:39 schrieb Koontz John E:

> On Thu, 13 Jul 2006, [ISO-8859-1] A.W. Tüting wrote:
>> This makes a lot of sense to me. So it seems that my tentative
>> expectation that unaker is not a Chinese loan might be supported,
>
> Yes.  It would be a Cherokee loan in English, I guess!
>
>> since terms for 'main' colours (like white) seldom are adopted from
>> foreign languages.
>
> I don't know if I'd go along with this, however, although I don't 
> believe
> it was being suggested that Cherokee had borrwed a color term.
>
> Consider German blau, English blue, French bleu.
>
> Or consider that terms for 'white' have not been particularly stable in
> Italic/Romance languages over the past 2000 years or so.
>
> Or consider that Dakota has two terms for 'red', neither of which is
> cognate with the usual terms in the rest of MVS.
>
> For that matter, several of the MVS color terms have resemblants in
> Uto-Aztecan, though it's hard to know what to make of that.
>
>
>