Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

De, Li, Fu ... Black, White, Red

Today's Torn Tongue post over on torn_world is about colors.  Some languages have very few color terms (the minimum seems to be "dark" and "light") while others have many.  Torn Tongue has some interesting conventions regarding color terms.

Tags: linguistics, torn world
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  • 6 comments
siege

siege

February 12 2010, 20:04:39 UTC 11 years ago

Interestingly enough, from observations of primitive cultures, human language developed color words in the order of red, black, blue, green, white, ochre/brown/yellow, all the rest.
ysabetwordsmith

Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

February 12 2010, 20:39:23 UTC 11 years ago

That's interesting!

The linguistics book I used for this inspiration had a little tree diagram. All sampled languages seemed to have a minimum of "light" and "dark." If there was a third word, it was "red." If there was a fourth, it was "blue" or "green" (or a word that encompassed both). I can see why; red is important as a danger color, while blue/green equates to safety and sustenance.
siege

Re: Hmm...

siege

February 13 2010, 02:41:49 UTC 11 years ago

I suspect it's because "light" and "dark" aren't colors per se; they relate more to concepts of time. As actual colors that can be used to mark something, black and white come after danger and before art.
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

February 13 2010, 03:34:26 UTC 11 years ago

Those were translated as "black" and "white" with a note that they could be used for all the darker or lighter colors. Not time words.
siege

Re: Hmm...

siege

February 13 2010, 03:36:40 UTC 11 years ago

Hm. I'm wondering about that... and now I'd love to go over the original research, to find out what cultures and what concepts were explored to come up with these different enumerations.
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

February 13 2010, 03:51:45 UTC 11 years ago

*laugh* That was my reaction to reading about it! I wanted to know more detail and see the data.