433 Chapter Seven Cosmos For the Matsigenka of Shimaa, kameti ...

The Matsigenka world is charged with supernatural significance, but everyday
conversation is dominated by pragmatic, one might say materialistic, descriptions. The material
world is described primarily in terms of sight and smell, and to a lesser degree, taste. Although
hearing is extremely important to them, especially in the forest, they are less likely to describe a
sound than to imitate it, often with conventions like tsein! for the sound of an arrow flying or tin!
for a footstep. For sight, smell and taste a small number of basic terms serve to label broad
qualities of the world. Then an ample supply of modifiers, including words made up by refering
to particular species, are available to provide rich and evocative descriptions of things.
A good example of this is the domain of color. In the comparative typology of color
terminology systems (Berlin and Kay 1969; see also Berlin and Berlin 1975), the Matsigenga
have a Stage V system with six basic color terms (Table 7.1). The Matsigenka use the term
sanori, “true” or “real,” to refer to the focal colors in each color range: focal yellow (kiteri
sanorira, or okitetasanotake) centers on lemon yellow, focal red (kiraari sanorira) on a fully
saturated fire-engine red, and so on.
potsitari
kutari
kiraari
kiteri
kaniari
kamachonkari
black
white
red
yellow
green
blue
Table 7.1. Matsigenka Basic Color Terms (Source Johnson et al 1986).
The basic terms can be modified in a variety of ways to express gradations of color. In
addition to sanori, the most common modifier is choeni, a distance term (Table 7.5) meaning
close or near. So, “it’s almost blue” (choeni okamachongatake) can refer to a greenish-blue, a
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