Orð og tunga - 01.06.2013, Page 133

Susanne M. Arthur: Are Oranges Yellow?
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nature.4 Crawford (2011) insists that "the value of [Berlin and Kay's]
monolexemic criterion [- which excludes compound terms -] may
be questioned in a language community that strongly identifies itself
with independence from lexical borrowings from other languages."
As in the case of purple, Modern Icelandic uses a compound, appel-
sínugulur 'yellow like an orange' to denote the color orange (a second-
ary color-term according to Berlin and Kay's study). This article seeks
out to prove, however, that appelsínugulur - like fjólublár - should be
considered a basic color term. The author begins with a brief histo-
ry of the fruit and color orange (ch. 2) and gives an overview of the
development of terms for the fruit and color in Icelandic (ch. 3 and
ch. 4). She then explores reasons why appelsínugulur became the pre-
dominant term in Icelandic and examines whether it is perceived as
a shade of yellow or an independent and basic color term (ch. 5 and
ch. 6).
2 A Brief History of the Fruit and Color Orange
The orange tree probably originated in northern India and reached
China around 2200 B.C. and later Europe via the Silk Road (Toussaint-
Samat 1992:662-663; Root 1980:303). The term orange for the fruit is
possibly of Dravidian (Tamil) origin and was adopted into Sanskrit
(nárangah), and later Persian (nárang), Arabic (náranj) and Spanish
(naranja) (Barnhart 1988:733; OED 1989:X.887; OED online 2011: 'or-
ange;' American Heritage 2009). The first oranges introduced to Europe
- so-called Persian oranges - were bitter. The Latin term for this bitter
variety is pomum aurantium 'orange apple/ from which, for example,
the Italian pomeransi, French pume orenge, German Pomeranze, and Dan-
ish pomerans are derived. Aurantium likely refers to the original San-
skrit term for the fruit, although it has been argued (see e.g., Bonavia
1888:327) that it is related to aurum 'gold/ thus referring to the golden
color of orange peel.5 The English term orange is a shortening of the Old
French form pume orenge. The first recorded written citation of the word
in Middle English is found in a text composed around 1380 (Barnhart
1988:733). However, a record from around 1290 suggests that oranges
4 I would like to thank Jackson Crawford for providing me with a copy of his un-
published conference paper.
5 Another Latin term used to describe oranges is malum aureum 'golden apple' (Bo-
navia 1888:327).