Are there languages with systematic color-naming
schemes, like computer hex codes for colours?
This reminds me of a certain all-vowel Japanese word,
and I think you know which word I mean.
--
Robert Lozyniak
Accusplit pedometer manufactures can go suck eggs
My page: http://walk.to/11
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - email
(917) 421-3909 x1133 - voicemail/fax
---- Timothy Greenwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> You may care to take a brief break from language
> identifiers to appreciate
> these lines. They are the final two paragraphs
> from the essay "The Last
> Word. Can the Worlds Small Languages Be Saved?"
> by Earl Shorris in the
> August edition of Harpers magazine.
>
> " I think now that every language has its Ellam
> Yua. The consolation the old
> men sought existed only in Maya. Every epithet
> implied a unique set of
> attributes, every sound described a unique Being.
> It is not merely a
> writer's conceit to think that the human world
> is made of words and to
> remember that no two words in all the world's languages
> are alike. Of all
> the arts and sciences made by man, none equals
> a language, for only a
> language in its living entirety can describe a
> unique and irreplaceable
> world. I saw this once, in the forest of southern
> Mexico, when a butterfly
> settled beside me. The color of it was a blue unlike
> any I had ever seen,
> hue and intensity beyond naming, a test for the
> possibilities of metaphor.
> In the distance lay the ruined Maya city of Palenque,
> where the glyphs that
> speak of the reign of the great lord Pacal are
> carved in stone. The glyphs
> can be deciphered now. Perhaps. Only perhaps, for
> no one knows what words
> were spoken, what sounds were made when Pacal the
> Conqueror reigned. It may
> seem cryptic or even Socratic to say, but, in truth,
> only spoken words can
> he heard.
> There are nine different words in Maya for the
> color blue in the
> comprehensive Porr�a Spanish-Maya Dictionary but
> just three Spanish
> translations, leaving six butterflies that can
> be seen only by the Maya,
> proving beyond doubt that when a language dies
> six butterflies disappear
> from the consciousness of the earth."
>
> Tim
>
>
>
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