color terms

[A.W. Tüting]

Am 16.07.2006 um 16:03 schrieb Anthony Grant:

> As I understand it, Cherokee /yonega/ is also used as the term for
> 'white man' and is the term used for 'English' on the front cover of
> Feeling and Pulte's Cherokee-English Dictionary.  I've seen the form
> 'yowanega', too - is that plural?  (My knowledge of Cherokee is less
> than a smattering.)

'yo-wa-nega' might be "I'm a white man" (??) cf. Lakota 'maska' (I'm 
white) fr. 'ská' (to be white) or 'wa-ma-sicun' (I'm a white man) fr. 
wasicun [was^i'cun].


> Most varieties of Chinese I know about have pai/pak for 'white'.

These are just different dialects or romanizations respectively for the 
same word 白 (white, clear, understandable, wrong - of a written 
character):
Pinyin bai2,
Wade-Giles pai,
Cantonese baahk_

BTW, as for John's remarks on sapA vs. s^apA (the latter: dirty, 
blackened, defiled): I also found Lakota 'ská' vs. skákA (the latter 
meaning: doubtfully white or grey, as a house seen from a 
distance(sic!) ).

Alfred
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