Verde is also green in Spanish. A quick translation tells me that in Latin it's Viridis which makes it make sense that it's similar in most Latin based languages.
I have a fictional scenario I invented where a blind man is completely confused that “maroon” is a shade of red, not blue, given that it relates to the sea.
I always feel like Portuguese is the romance language that hated their parents and refused to participate in any family activities. Like Latin is in the front seat yelling back "Cur non eritis sicut sorores tuae!" and Portuguese is in the way back going, "Pare de tentar controlar quem eu sou!"
People speaking Russian always triggers my Portuguese language processor, so yeah I'd say that's accurate.
Here's the thing about Portuguese: you can go from portuguese to other romance languages much more easily than the reverse. If you want to learn Italian, French and Portuguese, start with Portuguese.
Given most of the US population lives between Massachusetts and Florida (so would likely have more of French exposure via English and history) , and the French influence in lots of English, it's a toss up.
I certainly learned the French vert long before the Spanish verde.
You're telling me you never encountered salsa verde before learning the French word "vert"? Even if true, I highly doubt that's the norm.
And I'm not sure why you think being on the East Coast matters. 13% of Americans speak Spanish at home, less than 0.4% speak French or Cajun at home. That's a ridiculously huge region you've cited that includes NYC where you're probably going to visit a bodega long before you learn "vert" and Florida which has major Spanish influence, just like the other two most populous states California and Texas. I live about 100 miles from the Canadian border in the west, so by your geographic argument I should encounter more French than Spanish, but Spanish exposure is way more common here.
And perhaps at one point they ate clay, so they would have been more reddish in color, or perhaps the dirt they were consuming was more reddish in color.
Googled it. It wasn't because of worms in general. It was from Vermiculus which is the diminutive of Vermis but also was how they called a very specific worm, at some point in time the only way they knew where to get red pigments from was by crushing this worm.
