Gau gorri pelotari, goiz gorri errotari

Abstract

From professional experience in teacher training colleges, a lack of knowledge has been observed among Basque speaking students regarding different aspects of Basque culture. There is frequently more concern to homologise their knowledge with the dominant culture in our environment than with Basque culture's own knowledge and use of philosophy, which means that age-old cultural knowledge could be lost. Within this context, this article covers the study of the word GORRI in order to show the enormous wealth of meanings which it possesses over and above the uniform use as a chromatic term (many of which are not known to trainee teachers).

The study starts by showing the different chromatic meanings which it can adopt, starting with the concept of red (with its variants: maroon, carmine, vermillion…), moving on to rosy pink, via «blond» within the terrain of yellow, even including shades of brown. Aside from considering it as a specific colour, attention is drawn to its use as a colour by antonomasia and it also shows the use of this term for the chromatic classification of different aspects of everyday experience. This article finishes with other meanings associated primarily with the chromatic point of view, preparing the ground to cover other meanings (naked, raw, atrocious, hard, laborious, fierce, extreme...) which, given the scope of this article, are left for a later publication.

The different meanings given in this article are mainly based on the massive compilation work carried out by Mokoroa, aiming for it to serve as an example whilst paying homage to him and similar compilers within the Basque culture.