On 8/21/07, JAMES CHRISTIAN READ wrote:
> the claim that they have no
> expression of colour is immediately contradicted in the
> article by the observation that they use objects whose
> colour is well known to describe colour. Hang on a
> minute! Don't we do that in English (gold, silver,
> copper, bronze, emerald, ruby etc.)?
Hebrew also makes this comparison -- red/blood, yellow/gold,
black/dawn, perhaps even orange/ostracon letter(?), and in
some cases it may be hard to tell which came first -- green/
vegetable. But what he claims with the Piraha is that they do
not have a single word for any color names. Thus, one day
they may say, take the gold-colored bowl, the next day,
take the fire-colored bowl, etc. The choice changes as the
mood changes, and this is not because there are
synonyms in the vocabulary, but because color names are
not in their vocabulary.