THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE VIETNAMESE NAMES OF COLORS

Abstract

The words of colors are an important part in Vietnamese vocabulary. In the study of the origin of these words (red, blue, yellow, white and black), we found that Vietnamese names of colors shared more characteristics common to other languages in the Austroasiatic family. However, some of them have become part of many of the genetically unrelated languages of Southeast Asia, such as Thai (one of the Tai-Kadai languages) or the Malayo-Polynesian group within Austronesian.