The main colours
Lesson 3 of 13≈ 8 min
Four shades to start
Shikomori has a compact base system with four primary colours. Enough to describe the concrete world. Nuances and secondary terms are compounds or loanwords (from French, Arabic).
Colours agree with the noun class of what they qualify. We'll revisit in detail in Module 3 — for now, just learn the base form.
The 4 primary colours
| Shikomori | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| ndjeu | white | pre-nasal ndj |
| ndzidu | black | pre-nasal ndz |
| ndzukundru | red | ndz + ndr — rich combo |
| mrututu | green | reduplication -tutu |
Listening
- ndjeu (white)
- ndzidu (black)
- ndzukundru (red)
- mrututu (green)
With a noun
- nyumba ndjeu — a white house
- mwana ndzidu — a black child (in the chromatic sense)
- gari ndzukundru — a red car
Note: the colour follows the noun — like French for common adjectives, unlike English. Word order is rigid.
Practice
Which colour is ndzukundru?
ndzukundru = ___.
« A white house » is said…
___
Mini-quiz
Green is said…
« green » → ___.
The other colours
From the Nisusoma shimaore booklet (CASNAV, 2019, p. 32 et 40).
| Shikomori | English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| bile | blue | |
| dzindzano | yellow | digraph dz |
| marundra | orange | also the name of the fruit (plural of trundra) |
| zambarao | purple | also the jambolan, a purple fruit |
| kulera | colour | French loan: tria kulera « colour it in » |
Practice — the booklet's colours
Which colour is bile?
bile = ___.
The word marundra means the colour orange and…
…___.
On to the human body
Body vocabulary: head, eye, tooth, hand, foot, heart… Most follow a specific class pattern (3/4, 5/6) — typically Bantu.