Dear Xatufan:
All I said is that Catalan is the only Romance language to have kept an evolution of the Latin word "crocus", which we say as "groc". How could I possibly say that Catalan is the only Romance language?
Not all poisons are bitter nor are all bitter things poisonous. Nor is all poison yellow. Although, for some odd reason "envy" has always been thought to be yellow in Latin cultures. There must be a link somewhere with "bitterness".
Que tengas una feliz navidad y un próspero año nuevo con tus padres y demás familia y amigos.
Gracias, Sr. Jordi, feliz navidad a usted también y a toda su familia.
I think envy as green.
You are of course, right about Catalan groc "yellow" and its singularity in the Romance languages. I first saw it listed as the Catalan word for "yellow' in a Catalan encyclopedia some years ago and thought of our English word crocus. Some species of this plant have yellow flowers like the Dutch Mammoth Crocus and the yellow snow crocus. Dictionary.com claims that the word came into Latin from Greek krokos; the Greeks in turn, may have borrowed if from Semitic since it resembles the Arabic word krakkub "saffron".
What you said about the possible origins of Spanish amarillo (and I believe Portuguese amarilho) may be true. The problem is that the first written records of Spanish and Italian both appear in the 10th century and we don't know much about their history or evolution before then. It was during the so-called Vulgar Latin period (Roman Empire) or Proto-Romance Period c. 100-600 A.D. that Spanish probably adopted *amarillus for yellow. However, having a Romance language background you are probably aware of this.
I think of bitterness as black, and envy as green.
Here is an interesting web page which talks about the words for various hues of the color "orange" in Finnish as well as words for orange in other languages of the world:
http://www.coloria.net/varit/oranssi.htm
Words for "orange" in some European languages Greek portokali, Albanian portokalle, Turkish portakal (rengi) and Romanian portocaliu seem to be derived from "Portugal" (Neo-Latin Portocalea).
In the 16th century the Portuguese introduced a new variety of sweet orange into Europe from China which became very popular in Europe and was known as the "Portugal orange".
Thanks for that info, Brennus. I wondered about it, but now I know.
This is a Semantic frequency list of colors and hues compiled by Helen S. Eaton in the 1930's. She was a linguistic research associate and a colleague of the famous linguists Otto Jesperson and Edward Sapir.
I don't know how accurate it is though because Spanisha (at least Mexican Spanish) also has guindo / guinda meaning a "cherry red" as in Ese carro es guindo - 'That car is cherry red (colored)'.
English German French Spanish
red rot rouge rojo
scarlet colorado
crimson roux encarnado
ruby grano
ruddy rougeatre
English: red, scarlet, crimson, ruby, ruddy
German: rot
French: rouge---roux---rougeatre
Spanish: rojo, colorado, encarnado, grano--- guindo?
"rossiccio" also means red-brown in Italian, but I'm pretty sure it derives from rosso.
Tiffany,
Thanks for that bit of information. "Rosus or rossus seems to have been the word for "red" in the popular Latin of Italy and Spain. French, however, retained the Classical Latin "ruber" which later became rouge.
A competing word for "red" in popular Latin was coccus ( a type of red berry) originally from Greek , kokkos "seed, grain" . It later gave rise to the words for "red" in Welsh coch and Albanian kuq.
About "guindo"... I've never heard it as a color. Maybe this meaning exists, but only in Mexico. My dictionary says the following:
GUINDO: s.m. 1 Árbol frutal que tiene las hojas dentadas de color oscuro y las flores blancas, y cuyo fruto es la guinda...
And about guinda...
GUINDA: s.f. 1 Variedad de pimiento, de tamaño pequeño y muy picante.
Una guinda is a firy sort of red pepper and really hot. Why not use it as a colour? After all "rose" is because of "rose roses" although there are now roses of many colours. Orange is also because of the fruit: "naranja" in Spanish and "taronja" in Catalan. "Saffron" is also a colour, "color de azafrán" and so on, and so on. It probably started as "color de guinda" the same as we still say "es color de rosa" in Spanish. Do you understand it know?
Jordi,
The Mexican speaker I knew who used it said "guinda". I thought that it might have a masculine form guindo but your information indicates that I could be wrong about that. Do you know if it is guinda for both masculine & feminine? This would be a very rare exception in Spanish if that's so. Kind of like el agua and la mano. Thanks!