Sargaĺk Vocabulary: Colors, Clothing and Certain Status Symbols

The Sargaĺk vocabulary for colours is not very extensive, but some terminology exists. The nouns for these colours - e.g. '(the colour) red' are syntactically not quite nouns, and thus often require some kind of auxiliary noun toform well-formed NPs. These nouns only have two cases, the absolutive and pegative. The form given with extra indentation is the adjective form, which does have a full set of congruence marking.

stal red, includes most pink, some purple, some brown and orange

stax

kəma white, includes some pink and gray.

kən

buxu yellow

buxĺ

ŋoca - blue, includes some brown and gray.

ŋot

ŕt'a - green

əŕt'

sokca - black, overlaps partially with red and blue

sokcń

These are the basic color terms. To express, say, 'the colour green', you would use the noun sibik (fem) and the colour name in the pegative:

sibik stalta, sibik kəmta, sibik buxta, sibik ŋocta, sibik ŕt'əta, sibik sokta

Sibik is a normal noun and can be inflected in any case.

As for colours more generally, the Sargaĺk do not have access to many coloured fabrics or paints. Green and red paint do exist, but are very expensive.

White clothing is a status symbol - it's hard to keep clean, and obtaining really white cloth is not trivial either. The colour ŋoca, ~blue, includes many seal fur colours.