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Irish |
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| Indo-European | Celtic |  Ireland |
Extended Latin | |
Irish colours
The colour system of the Gaelic languages is truly remarkable, as the way things are described with colours is so different from most other European languages. What one might see as most striking is the way the Irish language deals with the colours blue, gray, brown and green, as one might say that the sky is green and the grass is blue in Irish. Furthermore might one use buí to describe not only light brown hair, butter or nutella, but it is also the colour of old blood.
The use of colour terms differs depending on what the colour should depict. If one talks about shoes, buí definitely means brown, but when butter is described it is obviously used to describe the colour yellow! An old man might have grey hair, liath, but a horse with the same colour on its fur is glas!
fionn fair – to describe e.g the moon, blond hair, etc.
bán white, of the moon, of hair
dubh black, dark, the colour of a deep pond, of a pool, the night
donn brown, often to describe hair, a word commonly used to describe men in Gaelic séan-nos songs (mo dhomnhallan Donn fhèin)
crón brown
dearg red, but not to describe hair
rua red, but only to describe hair
buí yellow, brown, light brown, nut cream coloured, orange, the colour of old blood, the colour of nutella
gorm blue, dark green, gray, silver, a horse can be gorm
glas green, the colour of leaves, dark grey, a horse can be glas
liath light grey
corcra purple
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