I feel a little silly. I guess Rappe means black, Fuchs means chestnut, Dunkelfuchs is liver chestnut, braun is bay, and gray is grau. I look at these videos all the time, and don't recall that they ever listed the horse's color. I thought they were sires. Oops.
Anyway -- another nice one.
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The way those videos list the color and then some names could be much less vague. I've never heard anyone call a horse grau though, they say schimmel, which I find not so nice, because it means mold. Here is the pronunciation for fuchs: http://dict.leo.org/#/search=fuchs&searchLoc=0&resultOrder=basic&multiwordShowSingle=on (Click the little play button).
ReplyDeleteNow if I could just find the German word for the color periwinkle...
Blauviolett, that's the closest you will get to periwinkel.
ReplyDeleteAs for Schimmel, yes, today it also means mold. But it's etymology starts somewhere in some northern language where it basically just meant "shimmering white". Something a gray horse does (especially a young one, more roan than gray yet) and yes, mold does that too...
I speak German but have never heard "Rappe" for a black horse, so even though I thought Fuchs was a pretty literal name, I didn't put two and two together!
ReplyDeleteThere is no german transaltion for the color periwinkel. In Germany you won't find a lot of 'special' names for colors (one would be immergrün, but it's rarely used).
ReplyDeleteA Rappe is a black horse, named after the bird raven (in German 'Rabe').
A Schimmel is not only a white horse, it's also used for eg fleabit or roans. So every horse with white kemps.