Actually, we’ll be talking about eight shades of green. Not fifty. I’ll explain why in a moment.
So I’m actually working on two writing projects at the moment. Where Arrows Fall is still a work in progress, but sometimes, I need breaks from editing. And so I turn to my second project, which is a fantasy novel. As a weird person, I decided to invent a fictional language for this fantasy novel. It is spoken by a particular race of people who call themselves the Desuri, but who are known to other races as the Elysians. (Confused yet? Good. Just bear in mind that different languages have different names for different countries. The United States is “Los Estados Unidos” in Spanish, for example.) I’ll just pick a language and call them Elysians.
The Elysians live in the woods and are the result of intermarriage between humans and tree-spirits. Now, if you have a grandparent who is literally a tree, your language is going to have certain peculiarities to it. The word for “leaf,” for example, is the same as the word for “hair.” But you’re also going to distinguish between colors pretty well, particularly shades of green. Because the woods have a lot of green in them.
First off is “kineh,” the generic word that covers all shades of green. But why settle for just plain green when you can get more descriptive? That’s where words like “kinaeyo” come in. “kinaeyo,” pronounced “kin-EYE-yo, translates directly to “young green.” It’s the first sort of green that you see in the spring, that beautiful yellowish green of new grass and new leaves and new hope. But then spring fades into summer, and the trees turn a different color. This color is called “kinesat,” or mature green. It’s the darker green that watches children as they play over summer break, the green that catches kites and baseballs. The summer herbs are picked and dried for medicinal use. They fade and dry until they become “kinikhit,” or dry-leaf green. This is a pale, dusty shade. It speaks of attics and medicines that smell good but taste terrible. As fall comes in, the grass begins to wither and die. “Kinshet” is the name given to this mottled, dying green. Summer’s last stand. Undeniable proof that winter is coming.
Then winter indeed comes, and the only green left is “kindiresat”–eternal green. This is the darkest green, the shade of your grandfather’s flannel shirt. It is the color of evergreens as they sit, not quite asleep, but blanketed in snow, waiting for the rest of the world to awaken. And then the world awakens. New vines grow. They’re even yellower than the new grass and the new leaves, so they earn the name of “kinaelah”–sprout green. They’re almost, but not quite, neon. And then summer comes again, and so you go to the ocean. Sometimes, the water is “kinshas”–a beautiful blue-green.
They say that pictures paint a thousand words. If I weren’t as lazy as I am, I would probably just Google some images illustrating what I mean. Instead, I’ll use a thousand words to paint a picture. These are the Elysian’s words for the eight shades of green, and I hope that you can imagine what each one looks like.