Gavagai!

In't language wonderful? We make these sounds with lingua, lips and larynx [Ug Ug beep beep] and other humans (and some dogs) can understand them to carry a particular meaning. Not all other humans, of course; your {family | roomies | co-workers}will probably get your drift; but someone who has just struggled from a leaking inflatable through the grating roar of pebbles which the waves draw back  and onto Dover Beach - maybe not so much? [and every day, as someone with a tin ear, I thank St Fursey I grew up Anglophonic).

It's not fair, or sensible, to ignore that wet Somali refugee because, even if we SHOUT, he can't understand what we want. Not sensible? Because we are making a sorry hames of running things hereabouts and could really benefit from new ways of l◎◎king at the problems that haemorrhage our social capital and aggravate inequity, unfairness and exclusion.

That's why we need linguists (and signers, translators, grammarians); to see what falls through the cracks of communication when people speak to each other. I returned a rental-car the other day and pointed at the nearside front corner
Bob "those scuff marks were on it when I took delivery"
Avis "these alloys?"
Bob "I've no idea, it's your car"
Avis "No: do . you . mean . the . alloy . wheels?"
I'm glad we cleared that up, because extra charges have been anxious-making in the past.

The best ling thing on the internet since sliced infinitives is Lingthusiasm which I've riffed on before. In the latest of nearly 100 episodes they cite a linguistics 101 story about two lads in countryside who have no language in common. A rabbit exits the hedgerow and runs across the field and one man points and says "Gavagai!". What does the other person make of that single word - it matters because establishing the meaning might be the beginning of a beautiful mutually intelligible friendship. Probably "rabbit"?? But could be "fast" or "big-ears" or "I like a lorra shaggin' too" or "mammal" or "fox incommming". 

The Lingthusiasm discussion transitioned from [parts of] rabbit to a handy resource for inter-language comparison. Morris Swadesh (1909-1967), a student of Edward Sapir [of Sapir and Whorf prev]. . . became the GoTo for lexicostatistics and glottochronology. In 1952 he delivered a 215 word list of language universals, to facilitate the comparison of languages - how many members of the Swadesh List have the same root in, say, Hindi and Irish. IF all languages, and this is the hypothesis behind the lists, have a word for [alphabetically] - bird - come - drink - earth - foot - give - hand - know - leaf - many - neck - push - rain - tree - THEN you can be confident that speakers of two languages are talking about the same thing . . . and you can make your comparisons. You may be able to see the connexion with the Gavagai tale. I guess that populating the Swadesh List for a newly discovered language would involve the same sort of non-leading questions as used to fill a Linguistic Atlas: "What do you call the long, tapering, orange-coloured root vegetable with feathery green leaves?"

Anyway. Swadesh recognised / included only 5 colours [wot? no cerise or teal?] because, for e.g., blue is not universal. Here are those colours in 9 different EU languages. What I've done is sort the five words in each language alphabetically. Your task is to match the colours between each pair of languages. Maybe start with EN and Nederlands?

Maybe not so easy? - even when you exclude the two not IndoEuropean tongues = HU and FI. You may express your admiration for those 19thC scholars who wrangled the Indo-European family of languages to appreciate that they were all descended from PIE - a language spoken by central Asian shepherds maybe 5000 years ago. Swadesh Lists for more languages [Hausa Telugu Tagalog Klingon] than you can shake a stick at on wiktionary.

Answers

	EN	FR	HU	NL	PT	CZ	FI	IS	IE
87	red	rouge	vörös	rood	vermelho	červený	punainen	rauður	dearg
88	green	vert	zöld	groen	verde	zelený	vihreä	grænn	glas
89	yellow	jaune	sárga	geel	amarelo	žlutý	keltainen	gulur	buí
90	white	blanc	fehér	wit	branco	bílý	valkoinen	hvítur	bán
91	black	noir	fekete	zwart	preto	černý	musta	svartur	dubh

In context, you can believe that yellow and geel and gulur have a common [Germanic] origin. As for black, English has gone rogue by adopting blæc an Old English word for ink. But we keep the standard meaning in swarthy. Also ewe.