An Initial Exploration of Finnish Colors

This newsletter is an initial exploration of something of which I am completely ignorant, and of which I arrive at no clear conclusions. This is part of the research process. At this point, I'm unable to even develop any questions about the subject, because I know absolutely nothing.

I've started this process hundreds of times over the past three years while researching and writing the Colorphilia newsletter. I have no theories, insights, or even assumptions on the topic.

I don't speak Finnish.

I don't even feel the need to include the obvious disclaimer that I neither read nor understand Finnish. I'm not writing this to feign an iota of expertise about the suomi (Finnish language) or its värit (colors). Diplomatically speaking, Finnish is a "strange" language. It's considered to be part of the Uralic language family, and apart from neighboring Estonian, its closest cousin language is Hungarian.

Ignore the Obvious

When exploring the unknown, I begin with removing everything which is easily explainable or seemingly obvious.

The way I start researching colors of a language I know nothing about is that I look for color lists, and then I start filtering through them. For example, before starting trying to understand how the native colors evolved, I first need to identify all the basic color-words which are obviously from external sources:

Oranssi (orange), syaani (cyan), sininen (blue), asuuri (azure blue), violetti (violet), pinkki (pink), purppura (purple), indigosini (indigo), minttu (mint), fuksia (fuschia), and turkoosi (turquoise) are all very similar in language and etymology to other languages, and it makes sense why.

Sini- means Chinese, and just like Russian considers one shade of blue to be синий (sínij), as they imported the dye through the Silk Road, or the “Wan Li Cha Dao” (the Tea Road with 10,000 miles). 

Keltainen (yellow) and kulta (gold) sound very similar to the Germanic geld and guld. While I'm sure they have a much more complicated evolution, it still feels too familiar. If I were writing yet another piece on the color of gold, based on the name, I would probably assume that they were not likely mining for gold in ancient Finland, and they were introduced to the metal by trade.

Descriptive Language

An word indigenous to a language is more likely to have roots in some aspect of a material. For example, amber is called meripihka (literally "sea resin"), which would indicate that they knew exactly how it was mined. So even though I would question how and when meri came to mean "sea", I can still assume that this was a native term. 

Similarly, hopea (silver) seems to be derived from the word for hokha ("to shine"), which means that it was originally a descriptive word for the actual metal, not a borrowed word from some other culture. 

The original word for copper (vaski) also seems to be something dealing with the language, and not even an ancient borrowing. It may have been the same color as a vasa (elk calf), which was then used for vasama (bolts, arrows). It may simply be an evolution of the idea of vasta (recently, newly, or freshly).

This is complete conjecture, but I would rather see if a language has internal logic instead of simply assuming that every word is borrowed from somewhere else. 

Sky Gazing

One of the things I look for in a language is how they describe the world around them.

For example, the Greeks looked up to the heavens and saw a color which they associated with milk, therefore they called it a galaxy, which literally translates to "milky way". I have seen other languages make the same connection, and I would describe that as a "color-word".

Finnish describes the Milky Way in a completely different context, linnurata, which literally means "bird's track" because it was something about Finnic folklore.

Sunflowers

Sunflower is auringonkukka, which is literally the sun + flower, which would make it closer to German Sonnenblume than to Russian подсолнух (podsólnux - towards the sun), or the Lithuanian saulėgrąža (returning the sun) which seems to be similar to the French tournesol or the Italian girasole which are about "turning to the sun".

Green

Like (most?) other languages, they connect green with nature. The "vih" in vihreä (green) is also found in vihannes (vegetable), and even perhaps related to vehnä (wheat).

Light Fish

Valkoinen (white) seems to be connected with light (valo), and not like languages which connect it to some sort of white material. An interesting side point would be that the word for "oath" (vala) is very similar, and I'm certain that there is a reason for oaths or vows to be connected with light. 

So now we can ask, does valas (whale), a shortened version of valaskala (white? + fish) seems to be mean "(that big) white fish" or is it an external borrowing from the imaginary Proto-Germanic *hwalaz (“whale”), because it looks similar to that? 

If we were just looking at the word valas on its own we would definitely assume the word was borrowed. But once we understand that the etymology, it becomes less certain.

Mud Black

I try to see if the relationship between words mimics anything else I recognize from elsewhere. Or if it follows a completely different model.

The most common word for black is musta. I was trying to understand it the color-word came from the word from darkness or a physically black substance. While in Hebrew we can see a relationship between tzel (shadow) and tzelem (image, icon), the Finnish relationship between form and color seems to be different.

We can observe a connection between a muta (mud) and muoto (form, shape, figure) and musta (black) or muste (ink). Similar to the cobalt levels in Lithuanian clay resulting in a blue color, this makes me wonder if the color of Finnish mud is black.

Also, is there a different type of mud which is a different color, which would be called loka (mud, dirt)? If a language has two words to describe seemingly the same thing, we should probably assume that there is a distinction embedded in the words.

Pure Speech

At this point, I'm not trying trying to come to any explicit conclusions. I'm just asking questions and noticing things.

Speech (puhe) was a connection to blowing air (puhaltaa), which somehow turns into puhdas (clean and pure). Kirkas (clear and bright) seems to be more similar to kirja (book) and kirjoitus (writing). This may be completely wrong, because kirkas may be a relatively late word derived from kirkko (church)?

Any native language speaker may (rightfully) laugh at me at this point, but this is part of the process of curiosity. It's OK to be wrong and to admit to having absolutely no idea how something ended up that way.

Seeing Red

I have absolutely no idea how puna (or punanein) became red. 

Completely unrelatedly, a typically red rooster is a kukko which is likely an onomatopoeia for the sound the rooster makes and a kukka is a flower. Is that because both of them are describing a new beginning, because both of them may be red, or third reason?

I ask this because I can point to other languages where color words came from fowl and flowers, so if we were to know more about the original flora and fauna of Finland, we would likely be able to understand a bit more about the original colors.

Egg Yolk Brown

And sometimes, I just discover something which adds to a growing list of random curiosities I've been collecting. For example, the color of an egg yolk. In certain cultures, it is red, others it is considered orange, and in some, yellow.

Whereas brownness in Germanic languages seem to be connected to bears, the Finnish ruskea (brown) seems to come from a shade of red. Rusko (glow, redness) becomes ruskea (brown) and ruskuainen (yolk), which also tells us something about the color of their egg yolks, which were definitely were not bright yellow.

Initial Thoughts

In my opinion, Finnish is a language which seems to disprove Berlin and Kay's color language development theory which I wrote about a few weeks ago. Additionally, the language structure doesn't exactly mirror any other language which I've researched.

Next Steps

I don't know if what the next steps are in better understanding the history and etymology of Finnish color words. I intend to look at Finnish folklore and see what part color played within the various tales, which etymologies were explained, and which words were used to describe color before the modern era.