More? Morá?

During the coloring task Hamar speakers were given an empty profile of a cow and they would be encouraged to show, by coloring, a particular term. They could draw plain coats, patterns, and specific pigmentations on the animal's body. It helped me to better understand the representation of appearance in pastoral cultures.

When I asked participants to color the term t'iá, I was waiting for them to pick up the black pencil that was lying amidst the other colors. My friend indeed picked up the black pencil and started coloring the empty profile of the cow...but after a few seconds he and the other people who were observing our work started to say: “this is not really tʼiá, but it is morá!”. One of them added “this pencil is tʼiá on the outside, but the inside is morá!”

Morá?! Next to t'ia and silbí, now also morá? Later on I understood that morá is a desaturated, matte appearance. When I asked participants to pick all the morá pencils, they selected all the shades of gray and brown and included the black pencil as well. But during the t'iá test, I was unaware of this. So, as you can imagine, I was confused.

Luckily, as in the story about guitá (I will link it in the last step), it was a friend that opened my eyes to the Hamar worldview…