Kashubian colour vocabulary

The aim of this paper is to present the colour lexicon, including both basic and non-basic terms, found in Kashubian (or Cassubian), a West Slavic language spoken by a relatively small community inhabiting the coast of the Baltic Sea (the Pomorskie Province in Poland). The results of the five-minute elicitation list task show that Kashubian basic colour terms include words for white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, grey and pink. As regards the terms for purple and orange, due to language contact (Kashubian people are bilingual), many informants use the Polish words naming these colours; however, these words may – as the results of the task indicate – be treated as non-basic terms. Besides, it is worth considering whether Kashubian, like Russian and Ukrainian, has evolved a second basic term for blue.