> Not quite.  It's the other way about.  Glas retains green/grey, but
> the non-blue meanings have other names (gwyrdd/llwyd) which means that
> in modern everyday usage glas tends to have a specifically blue sense.
>
> I think it is fairly recent:  coch has certainly drifted away from
> meaning `brown' (these days borrowed directly from English) in about
> two generations.  My grandmother always talked about `bara coch'
> (brown bread, now literally red bread), but I don't know that anyone
> does any more.  At least, I don't know anyone that does any more.
>

Nefi bliw!

Suddenly several things have got a lot clearer - thanks Geraint.
I found it hard to believe that there was no original word for
'brown' in Welsh. Does this mean that there were only a few 'colour'
words in the language - 'coch' for reddy/brown end of the spectrum,
melyn for the yellowy bits and glas for the rest? I believe the human
eye can distinguish several million shades of colour, and it's
obviously impossible to name them all, but isn't three cutting it a
bit short?

I always worried about the Welsh sense of colour with ideas such as
'glaswellt' for grass - it always looks green to me. And given that
the Welsh seem to own herds of goats coloured variously pinc, piws,
coch, streips etc, in addition to the usual du, gwen etc, you do have
to wonder.

The comment about coch also makes sense in the context of beer: I
believe that cwrw coch is 'Mild' and 'cwrw melyn' is bitter - not
lager as you might think. There are other words for lager I'm sure,
most of which involve the waste products of various insects or
animals.

Nigel (ncallaghan@cix.compulink.co.uk)

(Ymddiheuriadau am y Saesneg - rydw i wedi treulio'r holl dydd yn
sefyll fy arholiadau Lefel A - Defnyddio'r Cymraeg i Oedolion - Uwch,
ac mae f'ymennydd wedi'i losgi ma+s! Dim ond y prawf lafar sydd ar
o+l, p'nawn yfore).