Does 'golden' suggest metal to you?
Nicola Browne
almost completely finished. Just a few last minute queries...
It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
its primary referent do you think? and would it bother you to see
sunlight or eyes described as golden in this context?
Thanks,
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Brian M. Scott
<nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in
<news:1a6a2cbc78cd5f0985...@mygate.mailgate.org>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
> OK - proof copies of 'The Story of Stone' have gone out and it is
> almost completely finished. Just a few last minute queries...
> It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
> and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
> and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
> its primary referent do you think? and would it bother you to see
> sunlight or eyes described as golden in this context?
No.
Brian
Alma Hromic Deckert
> OK - proof copies of 'The Story of Stone' have gone out and it is
>almost completely finished. Just a few last minute queries...
>
>It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
>and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
>and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
>its primary referent do you think? and would it bother you to see
>sunlight or eyes described as golden in this context?
>
Sunshine came before the metal was ever seen by human eyes. I would
have little trouble believing that word in context; the metal was
probably named after the colour of sunlight rather than the other way
around - and when you say "golden" I do think of the colour and not
the metal. That's why "copper" is more problematic - the same word
means both metal AND colour and could be semantically confusing to a
non-neolithic reader <g>
But in your context, no, it wouldn't bother me at all.
A.
Dorothy J Heydt
Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> OK - proof copies of 'The Story of Stone' have gone out and it is
>almost completely finished. Just a few last minute queries...
>
>It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
>and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
>and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
>its primary referent do you think? and would it bother you to see
>sunlight or eyes described as golden in this context?
Gold does appear in its metallic form in the wild. (They called
it the noble metal because it wouldn't deign to combine with
anything else into an ore). You could find nuggest or dust in a
streambed. I don't know how early on they were laying sheepskins
in streambeds to collect the dust on the lanolin (hence, the
Golden Fleece). I wouldn't object to "golden" sunlight or eyes,
assuming your characters could've seen drifts of gold dust in the
local stream.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
jere7my tho?rpe
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> OK - proof copies of 'The Story of Stone' have gone out and it is
> almost completely finished. Just a few last minute queries...
>
> It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
> and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
> and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
> its primary referent do you think? and would it bother you to see
> sunlight or eyes described as golden in this context?
Is there any reason to think these neolithic people would never have
stumbled across some gold? It does appear in nugget form, after all.
Then again, it also wouldn't bother me to see "bronze" and "copper".
Without reading your story, I am sure that it contains dozens of
concepts unfamiliar to Captain Caveman and his ilk, just by the fact of
being written in English. There's an implied translation into modern
English happening, and if your guys are describing something as "sort of
shiny reddish-brown" in their language then I'm happy to read "coppery"
in mine.
----j7y
--
jere7my tho?rpe | "The land knows whom it sent out;
(440) 775-1522 | In the place of human beings
jere...@oberlin.net | Their ashes in urns
http://www.livejournal.com/~jere7my | Come back to each man's house."
--- Aeschylus, The Agamemnon
Lucy Kemnitzer
> OK - proof copies of 'The Story of Stone' have gone out and it is
>almost completely finished. Just a few last minute queries...
>
>It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
>and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
>and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
>its primary referent do you think? and would it bother you to see
>sunlight or eyes described as golden in this context?
>
Fortunately for you, a lot of neolithic peoples used gold so it's a
non-issue.
Lucy Kemnitzer, still
http://www.baymoon.com/~ritaxis
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ritaxis
Suzanne A Blom
Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:1a6a2cbc78cd5f0985...@mygate.mailgate.org...
> OK - proof copies of 'The Story of Stone' have gone out and it is
> almost completely finished. Just a few last minute queries...
>
> It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
> and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
> and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
> its primary referent do you think? and would it bother you to see
> sunlight or eyes described as golden in this context?
>
is ore of a specific color; 'gold ore' is ore of a certain metal.
David Friedman
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> OK - proof copies of 'The Story of Stone' have gone out and it is
> almost completely finished. Just a few last minute queries...
>
> It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
> and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
> and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
> its primary referent do you think? and would it bother you to see
> sunlight or eyes described as golden in this context?
I think the metal is the primary referent, and it wouldn't bother me in
the least.
--
Remove NOSPAM to email
Also remove .invalid
www.daviddfriedman.com
Nicola Browne
news:jere7my2-C80556...@corp.supernews.com
> > It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
> > and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
> > and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
> > its primary referent do you think? and would it bother you to see
> > sunlight or eyes described as golden in this context?
>
> Is there any reason to think these neolithic people would never have
> stumbled across some gold? It does appear in nugget form, after all.
I don't mention it or allude to anything made from it so let's assume
that in my kind of neolithic my people haven't come across it.
> Then again, it also wouldn't bother me to see "bronze" and "copper".
> Without reading your story, I am sure that it contains dozens of
> concepts unfamiliar to Captain Caveman and his ilk, just by the fact of
> being written in English. There's an implied translation into modern
> English happening, and if your guys are describing something as "sort of
> shiny reddish-brown" in their language then I'm happy to read "coppery"
> in mine.
>
While that is true I don't want to use anything that jars with
the reader. I initially did use bronze and copper but on a read through
I wasn't happy that it worked. The book is written from two main view
point characters living in different times interspersed with some
first person stuff from the earliest time. Controlling vocab is
really the main way I can make the voices sufficiently different - you
kind of construct your own constraints and try to make a language
world for each voice.(I find it quite difficult) I think what I'm
asking is if gold as a description seems in a different category from
the other words I've excluded. Thanks for your input.
-
NIcky
Neil Barnes
slate and produced:
> OK - proof copies of 'The Story of Stone' have gone out and it is
> almost completely finished. Just a few last minute queries...
>
> It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
> and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
> and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
> its primary referent do you think? and would it bother you to see
> sunlight or eyes described as golden in this context?
Fool's gold, real gold; both visible in a neolithic context.
Neil
--
I have a couple of green eyed redheads show up,
though one is a fox and the other, dead.
[Nicola Browne]
Jonathan L Cunningham
It wouldn't bother me, either, but I would use 'yellow' instead if
I thought about it (which I probably wouldn't).
So "yellow hair" instead of "golden hair", "yellow feathers" instead
of "golden" etc. This would, no doubt, create entirely the wrong
mental image, and it's a YMMV thing, but 'yellow' just sounds more
neolithic to me. NOT because they would have lots of yellow things,
precisely the opposite: probably the only bright yellows they ever
see are flowers.
But that's me: like I said, I don't have a problem with 'golden'
if somebody else is writing it :-).
Jonathan
--
Mail to spam auto-deleted, use jlc1 instead.
jere7my tho?rpe
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> "jere7my tho?rpe" <jere...@oberlin.net> wrote in message
> news:jere7my2-C80556...@corp.supernews.com
>
> > Then again, it also wouldn't bother me to see "bronze" and "copper".
> > Without reading your story, I am sure that it contains dozens of
> > concepts unfamiliar to Captain Caveman and his ilk, just by the fact of
> > being written in English. There's an implied translation into modern
> > English happening, and if your guys are describing something as "sort of
> > shiny reddish-brown" in their language then I'm happy to read "coppery"
> > in mine.
> >
> While that is true I don't want to use anything that jars with
> the reader. I initially did use bronze and copper but on a read through
> I wasn't happy that it worked.
That's a rule I can get behind -- if it doesn't work, don't do it. :)
That said, it's likely that their culture would only have two to four
color distinctions, so you might be able to do something interesting
with voice there: anything beyond "black", "white", and "red" might be
alien to them.
Sea Wasp
> OK - proof copies of 'The Story of Stone' have gone out and it is
> almost completely finished. Just a few last minute queries...
>
> It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
> and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
> and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
> its primary referent do you think?
Most certainly. Gold. Of course, even the neolithic peoples might
well know gold.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Nicola Browne
> > That's a rule I can get behind -- if it doesn't work, don't do it. :)
> That said, it's likely that their culture would only have two to four
> color distinctions, so you might be able to do something interesting
> with voice there: anything beyond "black", "white", and "red" might be
> alien to them.
>
Well, this isn't the true neolithic but some concoction of my own - the
novel is a fairy story really and this culture, while having no metal
tools, have produced elaborate architecture, social system and
artefacts.
They have woven fabric, natural dyes and pottery - so while its not a
metal based culture it isn't primitive, though they co exist with more
primitive people. Perhaps I should find some other less misleading term
to call it.
Nicky
Dorothy J Heydt
jere7my tho?rpe <jere...@oberlin.net> wrote:
>
>That's a rule I can get behind -- if it doesn't work, don't do it. :)
>That said, it's likely that their culture would only have two to four
>color distinctions, so you might be able to do something interesting
>with voice there: anything beyond "black", "white", and "red" might be
>alien to them.
I seem to remember one of my professors saying that there were a
number of languages that had only two words for color ranges,
the color range of live things (mostly plant life) and the color
range of dead things (ditto). We might approximate them by
"cool" and "warm".
Marilee J. Layman
> OK - proof copies of 'The Story of Stone' have gone out and it is
>almost completely finished. Just a few last minute queries...
>
>It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
>and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
>and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
>its primary referent do you think? and would it bother you to see
>sunlight or eyes described as golden in this context?
I have prior knowledge in that I know that in the US, if you describe
something for sale as "golden," it has no requirement to actually be
gold. I wouldn't have any problem with golden sunlight or eyes.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Nicola Browne
> On Thu, 5 May 2005 15:57:34 +0000 (UTC), "Nicola Browne"
> <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> >> >It is set in some kind of neolithic and I have carefully gone through it
> >and removed all my inadvertent references to metallic colours - bronze
> >and copper mainly.(doh!) but I'm hesitating over 'golden' - is the metal
> >its primary referent do you think? and would it bother you to see
> >sunlight or eyes described as golden in this context?
>
as the consensus seems to be that it is OK. I'm going to get the
new page proofs back next week for a final check, but it is pretty
well ready to go.
Lucy Kemnitzer
No, the techical term for what you've described is "neolithic
civilization." There are lots of examples of them, but I'm only
thinking of New World ones at the moment (Great Zimbabwe? I don't
think so).
Ross Smith
>
> No, the techical term for what you've described is "neolithic
> civilization." There are lots of examples of them, but I'm only
> thinking of New World ones at the moment (Great Zimbabwe? I don't
> think so).
I tend to think of Catal Huyuk (add diacritics to taste) and Jericho as
the classic examples.
--
Ross Smith ........ r-s...@ihug.co.nz ........ Auckland, New Zealand
"Romantics might like to think of themselves as being composed
of stardust. Cynics might prefer to think of themselves as
nuclear waste." -- Simon Singh
jere7my tho?rpe
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> "jere7my tho?rpe" <jere...@oberlin.net> wrote in message
> news:jere7my2-724960...@corp.supernews.com
>
> > > That's a rule I can get behind -- if it doesn't work, don't do it. :)
> > That said, it's likely that their culture would only have two to four
> > color distinctions, so you might be able to do something interesting
> > with voice there: anything beyond "black", "white", and "red" might be
> > alien to them.
> >
> Well, this isn't the true neolithic but some concoction of my own - the
> novel is a fairy story really and this culture, while having no metal
> tools, have produced elaborate architecture, social system and
> artefacts.
The lack of color distinctions is still something one (not necessarily
you) can play with; modern primitive cultures with architecture and
complex social structures still exhibit broad color categorization. It
goes something like:
If they have two color words, they are "bright" (warm) and "dark" (cool).
If they have three, they are "white", "red", and "dark".
Four: white - red - green/blue - black
Five: white - red - yellow - green/blue - black
Six: white - red - yellow - green - blue - black
Seven: white - red - orange - yellow - green - blue - black
Eight: white - red - orange - yellow - green - blue - purple - black
If I were going to be knocked out of the story by a color word like
"gold" or "copper" (which I'm not), I'd be more likely to say "That's a
weirdly fine gradation of color for this culture!" than "How could they
have encountered metals?"
Cally Soukup
> In article <c7496eb07eb2c2e624...@mygate.mailgate.org>,
> "Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> > "jere7my tho?rpe" <jere...@oberlin.net> wrote in message
> > news:jere7my2-724960...@corp.supernews.com
> >
> > > > That's a rule I can get behind -- if it doesn't work, don't do it. :)
> > > That said, it's likely that their culture would only have two to four
> > > color distinctions, so you might be able to do something interesting
> > > with voice there: anything beyond "black", "white", and "red" might be
> > > alien to them.
> > >
> > Well, this isn't the true neolithic but some concoction of my own - the
> > novel is a fairy story really and this culture, while having no metal
> > tools, have produced elaborate architecture, social system and
> > artefacts.
> The lack of color distinctions is still something one (not necessarily
> you) can play with; modern primitive cultures with architecture and
> complex social structures still exhibit broad color categorization. It
> goes something like:
> If they have two color words, they are "bright" (warm) and "dark" (cool).
> If they have three, they are "white", "red", and "dark".
> Four: white - red - green/blue - black
> Five: white - red - yellow - green/blue - black
> Six: white - red - yellow - green - blue - black
> Seven: white - red - orange - yellow - green - blue - black
> Eight: white - red - orange - yellow - green - blue - purple - black
Do cultures with lack of color distinctions still do the "that's the
color of a clear winter day's sky" thing? In which case you could still
have plenty of fine color distinction, just without specialized words
for them. "Pink", for example, is actually the name of a kind of
flower; does it count as being its own word, too? I suppose now it
does, but it didn't always.
--
"I disapprove of what you have to say, but I will defend to the death
your right to say it." -- Beatrice Hall
Cally Soukup sou...@pobox.com
Nicola Browne
> > The lack of color distinctions is still something one (not necessarily
> you) can play with; modern primitive cultures with architecture and
> complex social structures still exhibit broad color categorization. It
> goes something like:
>
> If they have two color words, they are "bright" (warm) and "dark" (cool).
> If they have three, they are "white", "red", and "dark".
> Four: white - red - green/blue - black
> Five: white - red - yellow - green/blue - black
> Six: white - red - yellow - green - blue - black
> Seven: white - red - orange - yellow - green - blue - black
> Eight: white - red - orange - yellow - green - blue - purple - black
>
> If I were going to be knocked out of the story by a color word like
> "gold" or "copper" (which I'm not), I'd be more likely to say "That's a
> weirdly fine gradation of color for this culture!" than "How could they
> have encountered metals?"
>
Colour is very important in this particular story and I think my culture
would have developed appropriately distinct words for the range of
shades they could reproduce by dyes and glazes.
Fortunately for me they probably correspond with the colour terms
I am familiar with.
Its an interesting way of looking at colour though - what is the
evidence
for it?
Kai Henningsen
Kluge-Götze (a German ethymological dictionary) claims that gold comes
from the word for yellow (in German: "gelb") and means "the yellow metal".
(And likewise Latin "aurum" means "the shining metal".)
Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)
Brian M. Scott
<kaih=9WMi9...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote in
<news:9WMi9...@khms.westfalen.de> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> Kluge-Götze (a German ethymological dictionary) claims
> that gold comes from the word for yellow (in German:
> "gelb") and means "the yellow metal".
More accurately, <gold> comes from the same PIE root, *gHel-
'to shine', as <gelb> and <yellow>, but the derivation is
likely to be of PIE rather than Germanic vintage.
> (And likewise Latin "aurum" means "the shining metal".)
It's a little more complicated. Baltic and Tokharian also
have words for gold from a PIE root *aus-, so it appears
that already in PIE there were distinct roots, both *aus-,
one meaning 'to shine' and the other, 'gold'. But it's
certainly hard to believe that they aren't related, and I
think that most would agree that *aus- 'gold' is probably
from *aus- 'to shine'.
Brian
Brian M. Scott
<nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in
<news:ecbfe08240ade2dcec...@mygate.mailgate.org>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
The original research is by Berlin and Kay; the book's title
is, I believe, _Basic Color Terms_ and is from 1969. I know
that there's been a lot of work done since, but I haven't
looked into it. Heather might be able to give some
pointers.
Brian
Zeborah
> The lack of color distinctions is still something one (not necessarily
> you) can play with; modern primitive cultures with architecture and
> complex social structures still exhibit broad color categorization. It
> goes something like:
>
> If they have two color words, they are "bright" (warm) and "dark" (cool).
> If they have three, they are "white", "red", and "dark".
> Four: white - red - green/blue - black
Not always; once you get to four it can vary and you often get white,
red, yellow and black -- I think many Aboriginal languages have this,
but I'm only judging really by their art here so don't trust me!
> Five: white - red - yellow - green/blue - black
> Six: white - red - yellow - green - blue - black
> Seven: white - red - orange - yellow - green - blue - black
> Eight: white - red - orange - yellow - green - blue - purple - black
Again, it varies, and take English -- we currently have eleven basic
colour terms, which I think is the most number known in a language.
They are black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, grey, brown, pink,
orange and purple.
The last three are more recent additions to the language -- pink from
the flower, orange from the fruit, purple from the shell (all IIRC).
Before we got those, we only (AFAIK) had the first eight.
Note that this is all about _basic_ colour terms, the colours that you
teach young children, and which cause you to be a bit flustered when you
discover that they don't exist in a language you're trying to learn.
People can always distinguish grass-green/blue from sky-green/blue if
they need to.
Zeborah
--
Gravity is no joke.
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
Zeborah
> Fortunately for me they probably correspond with the colour terms
> I am familiar with.
> Its an interesting way of looking at colour though - what is the
> evidence for it?
I'm more or less making the following up based on a fairly generic
understanding of things, so take it for what it's worth:
I think that "basic colour terms" of this sort refers more or less to
the answers you get if you point at something and ask your average
native speaker of the language "What colour is that?"
*Most* of the time, in English, you'll be told "blue" or "green" or
whatever and it's only if you ask "What kind of green?" that someone
might say "turquoise" or "bottle green".
But also they're the words that you can't say "X is a kind of Y" about.
You can say "turquoise is a kind of green" but you can't really say
"Orange is a kind of red" or "Grey is a kind of black".
I think you can't say "Pink is a kind of red," though I'm not quite so
certain of this; it's not as bizarre as when my mother told me brown was
a kind of orange. But if you pointed to something pink, asked someone
"What colour is it?" and they said "red", you'd think something was very
odd, like maybe they didn't know the language or were oddly colour-blind
or something.
(With the brown/orange example I knew what my mother meant, but it still
felt intuitively wrong and I think I was a little uncomfortable with the
idea. Whereas you'd never be uncomfortable with the idea that violet is
a kind of purple.)
Neil Barnes
and produced:
> I think you can't say "Pink is a kind of red," though I'm not quite so
> certain of this; it's not as bizarre as when my mother told me brown was
> a kind of orange. But if you pointed to something pink, asked someone
> "What colour is it?" and they said "red", you'd think something was very
> odd, like maybe they didn't know the language or were oddly colour-blind
> or something.
Hunting Pink?
Lucy Kemnitzer
Pink _was_ a kind of red until pretty well recently in the scheme of
things. It became a color word in the 1600s -- before that it was a
flower of the genus Dianthus (carnations, for example, were clove
pinks). Oh, weird, I just looked up carnation and it looks like it
originally was a color word, meaning any of the colors that human
flesh could be especially a pale to greyish yellow or a "moderate"
red, and became a color word because the original dianthus
caryophyllus was "flesh color."
Jane Austen at some point in some book or other caught my attention by
sarcastically discussing just how important it was that every father's
daughter acquire a pink dress -- I forget how she said it but it was
clear that pink was a pretty new color for dresses at the time.
Personally, I have queasy feelings about that two-color-word system.
I suspect that if it really happens like that, then discussions of
color are carried on as comparisons, and that the "color words" are
actually chiaroscuro words.
Del Cotter
Cally Soukup <sou...@pobox.com> said:
>jere7my tho?rpe <jere...@oberlin.net> wrote
>> The lack of color distinctions is still something one (not necessarily
>> you) can play with; modern primitive cultures with architecture and
>> complex social structures still exhibit broad color categorization. It
>> goes something like:
>
>> If they have two color words, they are "bright" (warm) and "dark" (cool).
>> If they have three, they are "white", "red", and "dark".
>> Four: white - red - green/blue - black
>> Five: white - red - yellow - green/blue - black
>> Six: white - red - yellow - green - blue - black
>> Seven: white - red - orange - yellow - green - blue - black
>> Eight: white - red - orange - yellow - green - blue - purple - black
Geeks: white - red - yellow - green - cyan - blue - magenta - black :-)
>Do cultures with lack of color distinctions still do the "that's the
>color of a clear winter day's sky" thing? In which case you could still
>have plenty of fine color distinction, just without specialized words
>for them. "Pink", for example, is actually the name of a kind of
>flower; does it count as being its own word, too? I suppose now it
>does, but it didn't always.
I think orange and purple are like that too, they started out as
exemplars and ended up as abstractions.
--
Del Cotter
Thanks to the recent increase in UBE, I will soon be ignoring email
sent to d...@branta.demon.co.uk. Please send your email to del2 instead.
David Goldfarb
Zeborah <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>I think you can't say "Pink is a kind of red," though I'm not quite so
>certain of this; it's not as bizarre as when my mother told me brown was
>a kind of orange.
To my mind, pink *is* a kind of red -- same range of hues, lower saturation.
The same relation as peach is to orange and lilac to purple. (I'm told
that Russian has a word that stands in that relation to the Russian
for blue.)
>But if you pointed to something pink, asked someone
>"What colour is it?" and they said "red", you'd think something was very
>odd, like maybe they didn't know the language or were oddly colour-blind
>or something.
Well, that's true.
--
David Goldfarb |
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | Private .sig -- please do not read.
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu |
Jonathan L Cunningham
>jere7my tho?rpe <jere...@oberlin.net> wrote:
>
>> The lack of color distinctions is still something one (not necessarily
>> you) can play with; modern primitive cultures with architecture and
>> complex social structures still exhibit broad color categorization. It
>> goes something like:
>>
>> If they have two color words, they are "bright" (warm) and "dark" (cool).
>> If they have three, they are "white", "red", and "dark".
>> Four: white - red - green/blue - black
>
>Not always; once you get to four it can vary and you often get white,
>red, yellow and black -- I think many Aboriginal languages have this,
>but I'm only judging really by their art here so don't trust me!
What word would one choose for yellow in a white/red/green-blue/black
system? White or red?
I would guess white for the sun, or a flame. A buttercup? A yellow
daffodil with streaks of red on the trumpet?
I presume, conversely, that in a white/red/yellow/black system that
leaves are black and the sky white?
Brian M. Scott
<zeb...@gmail.com> wrote in
<news:1gw776q.lzy64v2804uqN%zeb...@gmail.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> I think you can't say "Pink is a kind of red," though I'm
> not quite so certain of this; it's not as bizarre as when
> my mother told me brown was a kind of orange. [...]
> (With the brown/orange example I knew what my mother
> meant, but it still felt intuitively wrong and I think I
> was a little uncomfortable with the idea. Whereas you'd
> never be uncomfortable with the idea that violet is a
> kind of purple.)
I just think that she got it backwards!
Brian
Joann Zimmerman
says...
> Again, it varies, and take English -- we currently have eleven basic
> colour terms, which I think is the most number known in a language.
> They are black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, grey, brown, pink,
> orange and purple.
>
> The last three are more recent additions to the language -- pink from
> the flower, orange from the fruit, purple from the shell (all IIRC).
> Before we got those, we only (AFAIK) had the first eight.
>
> Note that this is all about _basic_ colour terms, the colours that you
> teach young children, and which cause you to be a bit flustered when you
> discover that they don't exist in a language you're trying to learn.
> People can always distinguish grass-green/blue from sky-green/blue if
> they need to.
Sometimes they don't know they need to, but this is why the sixty-four
color Crayola set is always such a revelation when you get it at about
age 7 or 8. (I know, most kids want one because it's bigger than the
other sets, making them upsides of the other kids, but I wanted mine
because of the colors, some of which I used obsessively. I was
fascinated by the difference, frex, between blue-green and green-blue.)
--
"I never understood people who don't have bookshelves."
--George Plimpton
Joann Zimmerman jz...@bellereti.com
Joann Zimmerman
rit...@cruzio.com says...
> Pink _was_ a kind of red until pretty well recently in the scheme of
> things. It became a color word in the 1600s -- before that it was a
> flower of the genus Dianthus (carnations, for example, were clove
> pinks). Oh, weird, I just looked up carnation and it looks like it
> originally was a color word, meaning any of the colors that human
> flesh could be especially a pale to greyish yellow or a "moderate"
> red, and became a color word because the original dianthus
> caryophyllus was "flesh color."
>
> Jane Austen at some point in some book or other caught my attention by
> sarcastically discussing just how important it was that every father's
> daughter acquire a pink dress -- I forget how she said it but it was
> clear that pink was a pretty new color for dresses at the time.
Thanks for bringing this up just now; in order to prevent me from an
extreme stupidity, can someone suggest a color assemby involving red
roses and some color that *did* exist c. 1500 that would be acknowledged
to look absolutely terrible together?
Nicola Browne
news:MPG.1ce68feeb...@news.individual.net
> > Thanks for bringing this up just now; in order to prevent me from an
> extreme stupidity, can someone suggest a color assemby involving red
> roses and some color that *did* exist c. 1500 that would be acknowledged
> to look absolutely terrible together?
I think that tastes vary hugely over time. People used to say
that 'red and green should not be seen except upon a fool' and yet
it is regarded as fine today - though it has to be the right green and
the right red.
John W. Kennedy
> You can say "turquoise is a kind of green" but you can't really say
> "Orange is a kind of red"
You can't in English today, but you could, only a few centuries ago.
"Orange" is a very recent addition to the set of canonical color words.
Indeed, "red hair" is a survival of that fact.
Grass is "blue" in Welsh to this day.
--
John W. Kennedy
"Give up vows and dogmas, and fixed things, and you may grow like That.
...you may come to think a blow bad, because it hurts, and not because
it humiliates. You may come to think murder wrong, because it is
violent, and not because it is unjust."
-- G. K. Chesterton. "The Ball and the Cross"
John W. Kennedy
> Again, it varies, and take English -- we currently have eleven basic
> colour terms, which I think is the most number known in a language.
> They are black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, grey, brown, pink,
> orange and purple.
Russian has twelve, including a distinct word for sky blue.
--
John W. Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Double%20Falshood/index.html
David Friedman
Joann Zimmerman <jz...@bellereti.com> wrote:
I don't know the significane of the Jane Austen quote, but I'm pretty
sure that "pink cloth didn't exist in period" ("period," in context,
being pre-seventeenth century) is a claim sometimes made by people in
the SCA and denied by those who are well informed on the subject. It's
possible that Austen was referring to a change in fashion.
--
Remove NOSPAM to email
Also remove .invalid
www.daviddfriedman.com
David Friedman
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> "Joann Zimmerman" <jz...@bellereti.com> wrote in message
> news:MPG.1ce68feeb...@news.individual.net
>
> > > Thanks for bringing this up just now; in order to prevent me from an
> > extreme stupidity, can someone suggest a color assemby involving red
> > roses and some color that *did* exist c. 1500 that would be acknowledged
> > to look absolutely terrible together?
>
>
> I think that tastes vary hugely over time. People used to say
> that 'red and green should not be seen except upon a fool' and yet
> it is regarded as fine today - though it has to be the right green and
> the right red.
One possibility is that the "right red" and "right green" weren't
available then. Presumably the range of colors you can get with modern
dyes is larger than the range available a few centuries ago.
Is your "used to" a few decades back or a few centuries back?
David M. Palmer
<zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Again, it varies, and take English -- we currently have eleven basic
> colour terms, which I think is the most number known in a language.
> They are black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, grey, brown, pink,
> orange and purple.
What's basic? Why isn't, e.g., violet a basic color?
And what did people call the color orange before 1600 (the first cited
instance in the OED)?
--
David M. Palmer dmpa...@email.com (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)
Lucy Kemnitzer
What's confusing them is that, as I said, the _color word_ "pink"
didn't exist until the 1600s. I find it hard to believe that the dye
techniques did not exist to produce a pastel red (the color you
produce in painting by mixing white and red). I just don't know what
they called it before then. Pale red? Carnation? -- which was a
color word before it was a flower word, and I don't know what
"moderate red" means, or the varied range of colors of human flesh.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Rose red, primrose yellow, violet blue, forget me not blue, cornflower
blue, and why can't I think of any pink European flowers? (I mean
pink enough that you say the name and you get the color in your mind?)
The color of certain gooseberries?
Or -- "the color of a clove pink." Now you've got the color, and it's
period, and it evokes "pink" to the modern mind even if they've never
seen a pink carnation.
Brian M. Scott
<dmpa...@email.com> wrote in
<news:070520051052494448%dmpa...@email.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> In article <1gw6nsf.rnzf78164vk74N%zeb...@gmail.com>, Zeborah
> <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Again, it varies, and take English -- we currently have eleven basic
>> colour terms, which I think is the most number known in a language.
>> They are black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, grey, brown, pink,
>> orange and purple.
> What's basic? Why isn't, e.g., violet a basic color?
I quote from
<http://haldjas.folklore.ee/folklore/vol3/red.htm>, which
has a good introduction to the original Berlin & Kay version
and the later Kay & McDaniel version; this refers to the
original definition by Berlin & Kay.
The notion basic colour term is defined by them
through four characteristics. If with these four it
is not quite clear whether that particular colour
term is a basic one, there are four more characteristics.
So the basic colour term should meet the following
requirements:
(I) It is a monolexeme; that is, its meaning is not
predictable from the meaning of its parts.
(II) Its signification is not included in that of any
other color term.
(III) Its application must not be restricted to a
narrow class of objects.
(IV) It must be psychologically salient for informants.
Indices of psychological salience include, among others,
(1) a tendency to occur at the beginning of elicited
list of color terms, (2) stability of reference across
informants and across occasions of use, and (3)
occurrence in the ideolects of all informants. If these
characteristics leave room for doubt, then:
(V) The doubtful form should have the same
distributional potential as the previously established
basic terms. For example, in English, allowing the
suffix -ish, for example, reddish, whitish, and greenish
are English words, but *aguaish and *chartreus (e) ish
are not.
(VI) Colour terms, that are also the name of an object
characteristically having that color are suspect, for
example, gold, silver, and ash. This subsidiary criterion
would exclude orange, in English, if it were a doubtful
case on the basic criteria (i-iv).
(vii) Recent foreign loan words may be suspect.
(viii) In cases where lexemic status is difficult to
assess [see criterion (i)], morphological complexity is
given some weight as a secondary criterion. The English
term blue-green might be eliminated by this criterion.
(Berlin, Kay 1969, 5-7).
The book chapter at
<http://aardvark.ucsd.edu/~joncohen/color/hardin2.html> is
also quite readable and very interesting.
> And what did people call the color orange before 1600 (the
> first cited instance in the OED)?
The June 2004 version of the OED has earlier citations for
the color noun, notably this from 1557, from Great Brit.
Statutes at Large VI. 100: 'Coloured cloth of any other
colour or colours..hereafter mentioned, that is to say,
scarlet, red, crimson, morrey, violet, pewke, brown, blue,
black, green, yellow, blue, orange, [etc.]'.
For the color adjective it has a 1532 citation from the
Accts. Treasurer Scotl., VI. 73: 'Ane 1/2 elne orenze
veluot'. And from an inventory of the Royal Wardrobe of
1542: 'Item thrie peces of courtingis for the chepell of
oringe hew'.
In all likelihood orange items were described as red or
yellow, depending on the shade and probably the speaker,
perhaps with modifiers. For instance, the word <yellowish>
is found by 1379 (<3olowyssh>), and the specific combination
<yellowish red> is noted from 1615.
Brian
David Friedman
"Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> > And what did people call the color orange before 1600 (the
> > first cited instance in the OED)?
>
> The June 2004 version of the OED has earlier citations for
> the color noun, notably this from 1557, from Great Brit.
> Statutes at Large VI. 100: 'Coloured cloth of any other
> colour or colours..hereafter mentioned, that is to say,
> scarlet, red, crimson, morrey, violet, pewke, brown, blue,
> black, green, yellow, blue, orange, [etc.]'.
>
> For the color adjective it has a 1532 citation from the
> Accts. Treasurer Scotl., VI. 73: 'Ane 1/2 elne orenze
> veluot'. And from an inventory of the Royal Wardrobe of
> 1542: 'Item thrie peces of courtingis for the chepell of
> oringe hew'.
>
> In all likelihood orange items were described as red or
> yellow, depending on the shade and probably the speaker,
> perhaps with modifiers. For instance, the word <yellowish>
> is found by 1379 (<3olowyssh>), and the specific combination
> <yellowish red> is noted from 1615.
>
What about "orange" as the name of a fruit? I know that the Arabic
version of the name shows up at least as early as the 13th century,
since it's in a recipe.
Joann Zimmerman
rit...@cruzio.com says...
It is certainly true that they were quite capable of mixing paint to
achieve the effect; all sorts of painted dresses were pink in the period
I'm thinking about. So I suppose my question is: what colors were
considered to not go with each other, and what words would have been
used to describe them, and is there any way that I could set this up so
that we could get a bridal dress that clashed irretrievably with the
flowers that the bride's brother's fraternity had been charged with
getting for the wedding decorations? It's not essential to the plot, but
I thought it was a good way to set up a few dynamics, while at the same
time getting a laugh.
Brian M. Scott
<dd...@daviddfriedman.nospam.com> wrote in
<news:ddfr-336583.1...@newsread1.mlpsca01.us.to.verio.net>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> What about "orange" as the name of a fruit? I know that the Arabic
> version of the name shows up at least as early as the 13th century,
> since it's in a recipe.
Ante 1400, J. Mirfield, Sinonoma Bartholomei 15:
'_Citrangulum pomum_, orenge'. The phrase <pume orenge>
appears in Anglo-Norman ca.1200.
Brian
Suzanne A Blom
John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:N35fe.31635$RP1....@fe10.lga...
> Zeborah wrote:
> > Again, it varies, and take English -- we currently have eleven basic
> > colour terms, which I think is the most number known in a language.
> > They are black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, grey, brown, pink,
> > orange and purple.
>
> Russian has twelve, including a distinct word for sky blue.
>
lightred.
Brian M. Scott
<sue...@execpc.com> wrote in
<news:117q5du...@corp.supernews.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
>> Zeborah wrote:
Many languages can make that distinction; that doesn't mean
that they have two basic color terms. (There are still some
who question whether Russian <goluboj> actually qualifies as
such, though the weight of opinion seems to be that it
does.)
Brian
Kai Henningsen
> You can say "turquoise is a kind of green" but you can't really say
> "Orange is a kind of red"
Oh? To me, both represent exactly the same kind of mistake. Turquoise is
blue-green and orange is yellow-red.
Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)
Kai Henningsen
> On 06 May 2005 20:06:00 +0200, Kai Henningsen
> <kaih=9WMi9...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote in
> <news:9WMi9...@khms.westfalen.de> in
> rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
> [...]
>
> > Kluge-Götze (a German ethymological dictionary) claims
> > that gold comes from the word for yellow (in German:
> > "gelb") and means "the yellow metal".
>
> More accurately, <gold> comes from the same PIE root, *gHel-
> 'to shine', as <gelb> and <yellow>, but the derivation is
> likely to be of PIE rather than Germanic vintage.
That's why I didn't say "the German word for" :-)
> > (And likewise Latin "aurum" means "the shining metal".)
>
> It's a little more complicated. Baltic and Tokharian also
> have words for gold from a PIE root *aus-, so it appears
> that already in PIE there were distinct roots, both *aus-,
> one meaning 'to shine' and the other, 'gold'. But it's
> certainly hard to believe that they aren't related, and I
> think that most would agree that *aus- 'gold' is probably
> from *aus- 'to shine'.
I don't quite see how that differs from what I said. To elaborate, I meant
that there are different ways of getting words for gold, ours from yellow,
and the Latin one from shiny (and that's what the French and Irish use).
The article actually listed at least one other variant IIRC, but I don't
remember any details.
I prefer not to transcribe PIE roots; that's much more work than looking
something up!
Suzanne A Blom
Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote in message
news:1ftfahq5hq0gn$.9glvfopvrst3.dlg@40tude.net...
not qualified to say for sure. It just has that 'feel.'
Brian M. Scott
<kaih=9WO49...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote in
<news:9WO49...@khms.westfalen.de> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> b.s...@csuohio.edu (Brian M. Scott) wrote on 06.05.05 in
> <5hhychv9ksyp.11...@40tude.net>:
>> On 06 May 2005 20:06:00 +0200, Kai Henningsen
>> <kaih=9WMi9...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote in
>> <news:9WMi9...@khms.westfalen.de> in
>> rec.arts.sf.composition:
>> [...]
>>> Kluge-Götze (a German ethymological dictionary) claims
>>> that gold comes from the word for yellow (in German:
>>> "gelb") and means "the yellow metal".
>> More accurately, <gold> comes from the same PIE root, *gHel-
>> 'to shine', as <gelb> and <yellow>, but the derivation is
>> likely to be of PIE rather than Germanic vintage.
> That's why I didn't say "the German word for" :-)
What I'm saying is that not only is it not from the German
word for yellow, but it's probably not from the
(Proto-)Germanic word for yellow, either.
>>> (And likewise Latin "aurum" means "the shining metal".)
>> It's a little more complicated. Baltic and Tokharian also
>> have words for gold from a PIE root *aus-, so it appears
>> that already in PIE there were distinct roots, both *aus-,
>> one meaning 'to shine' and the other, 'gold'. But it's
>> certainly hard to believe that they aren't related, and I
>> think that most would agree that *aus- 'gold' is probably
>> from *aus- 'to shine'.
> I don't quite see how that differs from what I said.
The point is that Latin <aurum> does not mean 'the shining
metal', since the distinction between *aus- 'gold' and *aus-
'to shine' predates Latin. Latin <aurum> may (and probably
does) go back to a much more ancient term derived from a
root meaning 'to shine', but the connection is no longer
there in the Latin word.
Perhaps a couple of examples will help explain what I'm
getting at. <Pferd> is from a Merovingian 'officialese'
(Amtssprache) <paraveredus> 'post horse', a compound of
Greek <para->, Celtic <-vered->, and the Latin suffix <-us>,
but none of this is apparent in the German word, which isn't
even felt to be a compound. A window is not a 'wind-eye'
_in_English_, though the Scandinavian source of English
<window> was just such a compound.
> To elaborate, I meant that there are different ways of
> getting words for gold, ours from yellow,
Actually, from a PIE root meaning 'to shine' that *also*
gave rise to the word for 'yellow'. PIE *gHel- 'to shine'
was extended with an adjectival suffix *-wo- to make
*gHel-wo-, the source of Germanic *gelwa- 'yellow', whence
English <yellow> and German <gelb>. The 'gold' words are
from *gHl-, the zero grade of the same root, with a
different suffix, *-to-.
> and the Latin one from shiny (and that's what the French
> and Irish use).
But the *Latin* word isn't from one for 'shiny', though its
ancestor probably is.
[...]
Brian
Aqua
> In article <1gw6nsf.rnzf78164vk74N%zeb...@gmail.com>, Zeborah
> <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And what did people call the color orange before 1600 (the first cited
> instance in the OED)?
Danish only adopted "orange" sometime in the 20th Century as far as I
can tell, and before that time, if it was particularly important that an
item wasn't red or yellow, but somewhere between, the equivalent of
"carrot-coloured" seems to have been used.
Aqua
Aqua
> On Sat, 7 May 2005 09:42:56 -0500, Joann Zimmerman
> <jz...@bellereti.com> seems to have said:
>>In article <ttlo71li81dv1alsp...@4ax.com>,
>>rit...@cruzio.com says...
>>>Jane Austen at some point in some book or other caught my attention by
>>>sarcastically discussing just how important it was that every father's
>>>daughter acquire a pink dress -- I forget how she said it but it was
>>>clear that pink was a pretty new color for dresses at the time.
>>
>>Thanks for bringing this up just now; in order to prevent me from an
>>extreme stupidity, can someone suggest a color assemby involving red
>>roses and some color that *did* exist c. 1500 that would be acknowledged
>>to look absolutely terrible together?
>
> Rose red, primrose yellow, violet blue, forget me not blue, cornflower
> blue, and why can't I think of any pink European flowers? (I mean
> pink enough that you say the name and you get the color in your mind?)
But wild roses are, to my modern eyes, pink. They're certainly not the
colour you get if you email your florist and order a dozen red roses.
Now I don't know at what point humans started messing around with roses
and producing varieties with more than five petals, and other colours.
Ah, the red rose of Lancaster may have been around in Europe since 800,
and it's a considerably brighter pink than wild roses, but still, it's
not the colour of modern red roses.
http://www.lancashirevillages.com/redrose/
This page is in swedish, but it has pictures of roses, and their dates:
http://www.floralinnea.com/pages/bast_doftande_rosor.html
(It's a listing of the 20 best-smelling roses, and makes the point that
historically roses were desired for their perfume rather than their looks.)
> The color of certain gooseberries?
>
> Or -- "the color of a clove pink." Now you've got the color, and it's
> period, and it evokes "pink" to the modern mind even if they've never
> seen a pink carnation.
I think the problem here is going to be that what a 1500-era person and
a modern person will imagine if you say "red rose" will be quite
different things.
Aqua
Nicola Browne
news:ddfr-24CA93.0...@newsread1.mlpsca01.us.to.verio.net
I don't know. People used to say it in the sixties and seventies
but I don't know whether it originated then. To me colours are like
words or chords or whatever you put them together to produce a
particular effect. You could do that in accord with convention or not,
but one person's clash is another's colour chord. You probably need to
look at what was used in the period and then mix colours
that don't work together in whatever way was fahionable at the time.
Generally people don't mix bold primaries with pastels but then every
now and again they do. Generally you don't mix too many contrasting
patterns - stripes with florals, spots with paisley or tartan - and then
someone does. There are no hard and fast rules.
Nicky
Lucy Kemnitzer
I'm not sure they had a concept of clashing colors until um, sometime
like maybe Austen's time.
But there could be something else -- if the bride's dress were green,
maybe, that might be a faux pas.
Lucy Kemnitzer
So before you get orange as a color word, you presumably get
comparison: "Red, like an orange." Or "As red as an orange." Or
"the red that an orange is."
Like that. But is that documented?
Brian M. Scott
<rit...@cruzio.com> wrote in
<news:r55r719kde6fkmcnm...@4ax.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> So before you get orange as a color word, you presumably get
> comparison: "Red, like an orange." Or "As red as an orange." Or
> "the red that an orange is."
Or 'yellow'.
> Like that. But is that documented?
No idea, I'm afraid. I'd not be surprised either way.
Brian
Daniel R. Reitman
>. . . .
>And what did people call the color orange before 1600 (the first cited
>instance in the OED)?
I think I saw an article once that suggested they may have used
jacinth, but I don't recall if it had any authority.
Dan, ad nauseam
Zeborah
> On Sat, 07 May 2005 21:26:47 -0700, Lucy Kemnitzer
> <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote in
> <news:r55r719kde6fkmcnm...@4ax.com> in
> rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
> > So before you get orange as a color word, you presumably get
> > comparison: "Red, like an orange." Or "As red as an orange." Or
> > "the red that an orange is."
>
> Or 'yellow'.
Google turns up 128 hits of "yellow as an orange" - probably about
twenty once you get rid of repetition and numerous "Orange \Or"ange\, a.
Of or pertaining to an orange; of the color of an orange; reddish
yellow; as, an orange ribbon". The references are mostly to skin colour
(especially jaundice), a couple to land or water colour. Most from the
19th century, but at least one each from the 18th and 20th centuries.
Google also finds 9 of "red as an orange", but these mostly the wrong
context, and otherwise refer to a face and setting sun once each.
Zeborah
--
Gravity is no joke.
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
Brian M. Scott
<drei...@spiritone.com> wrote in
<news:qb8r71t6d0g3creb0...@4ax.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
<Jacinth> originally referred to a blue gem, probably
sapphire. In Wyclif's Bible (1382) it refers to a dyed
fabric of a blue or purple color ('Iasynkt that is silk of
violet blew', Exod. xxv. 4). It's not clear from the OED
citations just when the sense changed; the earliest clear
example is from 1555. The derivative <iacinctinous> was
still usable in 1495 to mean 'dark purple'.
Brian
Logan Kearsley
news:d5ib14$22f1$1...@agate.berkeley.edu...
> In article <1gw776q.lzy64v2804uqN%zeb...@gmail.com>,
> Zeborah <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >I think you can't say "Pink is a kind of red," though I'm not quite so
> >certain of this; it's not as bizarre as when my mother told me brown was
> >a kind of orange.
>
> To my mind, pink *is* a kind of red -- same range of hues, lower
saturation.
> The same relation as peach is to orange and lilac to purple. (I'm told
> that Russian has a word that stands in that relation to the Russian
> for blue.)
Sinij (dark blue) vs. Goluboj (light blue)
-l.
------------------------------------
My inbox is a sacred shrine, none shall enter that are not worthy.
Kai Henningsen
> On 07 May 2005 21:59:00 +0200, Kai Henningsen
> <kaih=9WO49...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote in
> <news:9WO49...@khms.westfalen.de> in
> rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
> > b.s...@csuohio.edu (Brian M. Scott) wrote on 06.05.05 in
> > <5hhychv9ksyp.11...@40tude.net>:
>
> >> On 06 May 2005 20:06:00 +0200, Kai Henningsen
> >> <kaih=9WMi9...@khms.westfalen.de> wrote in
> >> <news:9WMi9...@khms.westfalen.de> in
> >> rec.arts.sf.composition:
> >>> (And likewise Latin "aurum" means "the shining metal".)
>
> >> It's a little more complicated. Baltic and Tokharian also
> >> have words for gold from a PIE root *aus-, so it appears
> >> that already in PIE there were distinct roots, both *aus-,
> >> one meaning 'to shine' and the other, 'gold'. But it's
> >> certainly hard to believe that they aren't related, and I
> >> think that most would agree that *aus- 'gold' is probably
> >> from *aus- 'to shine'.
>
> > I don't quite see how that differs from what I said.
>
> The point is that Latin <aurum> does not mean 'the shining
> metal', since the distinction between *aus- 'gold' and *aus-
> 'to shine' predates Latin. Latin <aurum> may (and probably
> does) go back to a much more ancient term derived from a
> root meaning 'to shine', but the connection is no longer
> there in the Latin word.
Well, I certainly didn't intend to claim otherwise. Blame it on sloppy
language; while I find etymology fascinating, it definitely isn't my
field.
> > To elaborate, I meant that there are different ways of
> > getting words for gold, ours from yellow,
>
> Actually, from a PIE root meaning 'to shine' that *also*
> gave rise to the word for 'yellow'. PIE *gHel- 'to shine'
> was extended with an adjectival suffix *-wo- to make
> *gHel-wo-, the source of Germanic *gelwa- 'yellow', whence
> English <yellow> and German <gelb>. The 'gold' words are
> from *gHl-, the zero grade of the same root, with a
> different suffix, *-to-.
In any case, a different root from the one for the Latin variation. Which
was the part I was interested in.
> > and the Latin one from shiny (and that's what the French
> > and Irish use).
>
> But the *Latin* word isn't from one for 'shiny', though its
> ancestor probably is.
Again, I didn't intend to claim otherwise. I just seem to not have spelled
it out in sufficient detail.
Lucy Kemnitzer
<chrono...@verizon.net> seems to have said:
>"David Goldfarb" <gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> wrote in message
>news:d5ib14$22f1$1...@agate.berkeley.edu...
>> In article <1gw776q.lzy64v2804uqN%zeb...@gmail.com>,
>> Zeborah <zeb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >I think you can't say "Pink is a kind of red," though I'm not quite so
>> >certain of this; it's not as bizarre as when my mother told me brown was
>> >a kind of orange.
>>
>> To my mind, pink *is* a kind of red -- same range of hues, lower
>saturation.
>> The same relation as peach is to orange and lilac to purple. (I'm told
>> that Russian has a word that stands in that relation to the Russian
>> for blue.)
>
>Sinij (dark blue) vs. Goluboj (light blue)
So what's the Russian original title of Maxim Gorky's _A Sky-Blue
Life_?
Brian M. Scott
<rit...@cruzio.com> wrote in
<news:i99t71pda8r9o0sgn...@4ax.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> So what's the Russian original title of Maxim Gorky's _A
> Sky-Blue Life_?
It appears to be <Golubaja zhizn'>.
Brian
joy beeson
<dmpa...@email.com> wrote:
> And what did people call the color orange before 1600 (the first cited
> instance in the OED)?
We *still* call orange "yellow" -- compare the "yellow" line
down the middle of the street to something that really is
yellow. (On the other side of the pond, if I recall
correctly, one needs to look at the "yellow" line marking
no-parking areas.) Orange isn't too red to pass off as
yellow until it's clearly red-orange; orange isn't a
definite color in itself the way green and purple are. (But
purple is less definite than green, which might as well be a
primary -- I've heard green referred to as a "psychological
primary".)
When I took marmalade cats to the vet in New York, he wrote
"red" in their files. Where I grew up, marmalade cats are
"yellow".
The there was the time I needed a red pencil, and got
vermilion . . . (When you want red, ask for "carmine".)
Joy Beeson
--
http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ -- needlework
http://home.earthlink.net/~dbeeson594/ROUGHSEW/ROUGH.HTM
http://home.earthlink.net/~beeson_n3f/ -- Writers' Exchange
joy beeson at earthlink dot net
Joann Zimmerman
rit...@cruzio.com says...
No, the bride and her family are very socially plugged in, so she
wouldn't do anything like that. It was more to show the idiocy of
trusting *anything* to these young men, even wedding decorations, much
less the *other* things that these early-Renaissance Kappa Alphas were
supposed to handle.
So it looks like I've got several choices:
-- it's alternate fantasy, ignore the non-existence of color clashes, or
better yet, invent some religious reason why two particular colors
should not appear together
-- come up with some other stupidity they could concoct (preferably not
to do w/ the provisions for the entertainment; another wedding already
has these fall apart because of the family cheaping out)
-- lose the incident altogether
Lucy Kemnitzer
What's the setting again? If it's late nineteenth century at least,
they could easily get funeral flowers instead of wedding flowers --
think all lilies and laurel and sprigs of willow and juniper, and
there you have it.
Joann Zimmerman
rit...@cruzio.com says...
> What's the setting again? If it's late nineteenth century at least,
> they could easily get funeral flowers instead of wedding flowers --
> think all lilies and laurel and sprigs of willow and juniper, and
> there you have it.
c. 1500 alternate Venice. I *think* that getting a bunch of mourning
cypresses would be incredibly stupid even for this bunch. Or maybe not.
Have to think about it some more.
Neil Barnes
slate and produced:
> The there was the time I needed a red pencil, and got
> vermilion . . . (When you want red, ask for "carmine".)
Phshaw! All these confusing colours. All you need is a reference value on
the IEE chromaticity chart, or a pantone reference.
Neil :)
p.s. Taupe is not a colour...
--
I have a couple of green eyed redheads show up,
though one is a fox and the other, dead.
[Nicola Browne]
Nicola Browne
news:pan.2005.05.09....@hotmail.com
>> p.s. Taupe is not a colour...
No, it is a way of life, darling.
Aqua
> We *still* call orange "yellow" -- compare the "yellow" line
> down the middle of the street to something that really is
> yellow. (On the other side of the pond, if I recall
> correctly, one needs to look at the "yellow" line marking
> no-parking areas.) Orange isn't too red to pass off as
> yellow until it's clearly red-orange; orange isn't a
> definite color in itself the way green and purple are. (But
> purple is less definite than green, which might as well be a
> primary -- I've heard green referred to as a "psychological
> primary".)
If I remember what I've read about human colour vision correctly, green
is a, would that be physiological? primary.
The primary colour split in human vision is apparently blue-yellow, with
red-green the secondary split, due to the more recent evolutionary
arrival of the relevant cones.
Also, I assume there's a more basic black-white split in there
somewhere, but it doesn't seem to get mentioned in the same contexts.
Aqua
Brian M. Scott
<nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in
<news:026d02fcd5e38bef48...@mygate.mailgate.org>
in rec.arts.sf.composition:
> "Neil Barnes" <nailed_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:pan.2005.05.09....@hotmail.com
>> p.s. Taupe is not a colour...
> No, it is a way of life, darling.
'Oh, what lovely taupiary!'
Brian
Alma Hromic Deckert
<nailed_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>and lo, on Mon, 09 May 2005 14:29:57 +0000, joy beeson scraped chalk on
>slate and produced:
>
>> The there was the time I needed a red pencil, and got
>> vermilion . . . (When you want red, ask for "carmine".)
>
>Phshaw! All these confusing colours. All you need is a reference value on
>the IEE chromaticity chart, or a pantone reference.
>
>Neil :)
>
>p.s. Taupe is not a colour...
Is too. And there IS a difference between eggshell and cream <G>
A.
Joann Zimmerman
Lucy Kemnitzer
<jz...@bellereti.com> seems to have said:
>In article <13jv71llvfbioeigl...@4ax.com>,
>ang...@vaxer.net says...
>> On Mon, 09 May 2005 18:25:08 +0100, Neil Barnes
>> <nailed_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> >p.s. Taupe is not a colour...
>>
>> Is too. And there IS a difference between eggshell and cream <G>
>
>Hear, hear.
ANd now, for the benefit of those who are thinking "huh?" here they
go:
-- eggshell is cooler and cream is warmer
taupe is not nearly white: it's a cool pasteled brown. (tan is a warm
pasteled brown, or else a pasteled and shaded yellow)
Zeborah
> Is too. And there IS a difference between eggshell and cream <G>
Of course there is. Cream goes on *top* of the pavlova; eggshell goes
inside it...
Brian M. Scott
<zeb...@gmail.com> wrote in
<news:1gwcs0r.1kck01d1xxtukzN%zeb...@gmail.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> Alma Hromic Deckert <ang...@vaxer.net> wrote:
>> Is too. And there IS a difference between eggshell and cream <G>
> Of course there is. Cream goes on *top* of the pavlova; eggshell goes
> inside it...
Interesting digestive system she has there.
Brian
Neil Barnes
on slate and produced:
> On Mon, 9 May 2005 17:45:48 +0000 (UTC), Nicola Browne
Now that's boxing clever!
Neil
Daniel R. Reitman
<ang...@vaxer.net> wrote:
>Is too. And there IS a difference between eggshell and cream <G>
NTM between eggcream and shell. :-)
Dan, ad nauseam
David Dyer-Bennet
> On Mon, 9 May 2005 17:20:19 -0500, Joann Zimmerman
> <jz...@bellereti.com> seems to have said:
>
>>In article <13jv71llvfbioeigl...@4ax.com>,
>>ang...@vaxer.net says...
>>> On Mon, 09 May 2005 18:25:08 +0100, Neil Barnes
>>> <nailed_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> >p.s. Taupe is not a colour...
>>>
>>> Is too. And there IS a difference between eggshell and cream <G>
>>
>>Hear, hear.
>
>
> ANd now, for the benefit of those who are thinking "huh?" here they
> go:
>
> -- eggshell is cooler and cream is warmer
>
> taupe is not nearly white: it's a cool pasteled brown. (tan is a warm
> pasteled brown, or else a pasteled and shaded yellow)
Dave Barry has, to my mind, done the definitive deconstruction of
"off-white" paint colors. I now can describe any color I see
accurately and usefully. The common computer case color is about 2%
rat droppings.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd...@dd-b.net>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/>
RKBA: <http://noguns-nomoney.com/> <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/>
Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/>
Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
Alma Hromic Deckert
wrote:
>
>Dave Barry has, to my mind, done the definitive deconstruction of
>"off-white" paint colors. I now can describe any color I see
>accurately and usefully.
I haven't seen this - is it online anywhere?...
>The common computer case color is about 2%
>rat droppings.
Oh lord... <G> figures, though, with that mouse hanging around...
A.
David Dyer-Bennet
> On Tue, 10 May 2005 18:09:41 -0500, David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>Dave Barry has, to my mind, done the definitive deconstruction of
>>"off-white" paint colors. I now can describe any color I see
>>accurately and usefully.
>
> I haven't seen this - is it online anywhere?...
I made a brief search, hoping to post a pointer, and didn't turn it
up.
>>The common computer case color is about 2%
>>rat droppings.
>
> Oh lord... <G> figures, though, with that mouse hanging around...
Every company tries to make white paint, but the standards of hygiene
are higher in some factories than in others....
Brooks Moses
> In article <13jv71llvfbioeigl...@4ax.com>,
> ang...@vaxer.net says...
> > On Mon, 09 May 2005 18:25:08 +0100, Neil Barnes
> > <nailed_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >p.s. Taupe is not a colour...
> >
> > Is too. And there IS a difference between eggshell and cream <G>
>
> Hear, hear.
Well, of course. Eggshell is GM Frost White, and cream is Ford
Wimbleton White.
- Brooks
--
The "bmoses-nospam" address is valid; no unmunging needed.
Joann Zimmerman
nos...@cits1.stanford.edu says...
> Joann Zimmerman wrote:
> > In article <13jv71llvfbioeigl...@4ax.com>,
> > ang...@vaxer.net says...
> > > On Mon, 09 May 2005 18:25:08 +0100, Neil Barnes
> > > <nailed_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > >p.s. Taupe is not a colour...
> > >
> > > Is too. And there IS a difference between eggshell and cream <G>
> >
> > Hear, hear.
>
> Well, of course. Eggshell is GM Frost White, and cream is Ford
> Wimbleton White.
<floored>
Now let that be an object lesson for all interior decorators.
Whoo-ee.
</floored>
Brooks Moses
> In article <4286D4E4...@cits1.stanford.edu>, bmoses-
> nos...@cits1.stanford.edu says...
> > Joann Zimmerman wrote:
> > > In article <13jv71llvfbioeigl...@4ax.com>,
> > > ang...@vaxer.net says...
> > >
> > > Hear, hear.
> >
> > Well, of course. Eggshell is GM Frost White, and cream is Ford
> > Wimbleton White.
>
> <floored>
>
> Now let that be an object lesson for all interior decorators.
>
> Whoo-ee.
>
> </floored>
Sure, but now I'm slightly baffled as to, if it's an object lesson for
interior decorators, what exactly you're expecting them to learn from
it....
Joann Zimmerman
nos...@cits1.stanford.edu says...
> Joann Zimmerman wrote:
> > In article <4286D4E4...@cits1.stanford.edu>, bmoses-
> > nos...@cits1.stanford.edu says...
> > > Joann Zimmerman wrote:
> > > > In article <13jv71llvfbioeigl...@4ax.com>,
> > > > ang...@vaxer.net says...
> > > > > Is too. And there IS a difference between eggshell and cream <G>
> > > >
> > > > Hear, hear.
> > >
> > > Well, of course. Eggshell is GM Frost White, and cream is Ford
> > > Wimbleton White.
> >
> > <floored>
> >
> > Now let that be an object lesson for all interior decorators.
> >
> > Whoo-ee.
> >
> > </floored>
>
> Sure, but now I'm slightly baffled as to, if it's an object lesson for
> interior decorators, what exactly you're expecting them to learn from
> it....
Well, I'd never really thought about where color distictions come from.
I'd probably sort of assumed from those goofy paint chips, the thread-
matching that many women (myself included) engage in from time to time,
and all that. It had just never occurred to me that an alternate
standard could be exemplified in Ford vs Chevy.
Anna Mazzoldi
> In article <6q4v711ihmrp2c7to...@4ax.com>,
> rit...@cruzio.com says...
>
>> What's the setting again? If it's late nineteenth century at least,
>> they could easily get funeral flowers instead of wedding flowers --
>> think all lilies and laurel and sprigs of willow and juniper, and
>> there you have it.
>
> c. 1500 alternate Venice. I *think* that getting a bunch of mourning
> cypresses would be incredibly stupid even for this bunch. Or maybe not.
> Have to think about it some more.
Chrisantemum is *the* funeral flower in Italy. I don't know about 16th
century Venice though: it may be a much more recent thing. Colour doesn't
seem to come into it, though in practice it tends to be farly muted colours
in my experience of Italian cemeteries.
--
Anna Mazzoldi <http://aynathie.livejournal.com/>
"Why did the chicken cross the road?"
Ernest Hemingway: "To die. In the rain. Alone."
Catja Pafort
> Alma Hromic Deckert <ang...@vaxer.net> wrote:
>
> > Is too. And there IS a difference between eggshell and cream <G>
>
> Of course there is. Cream goes on *top* of the pavlova; eggshell goes
> inside it...
Remind me not to taste your cooking...
Catja
Zeborah
<pout> I usually get *most* of the eggshell out.
(The other answer which now occurs to me is that cream is white,
eggshells are brown.)
Zeborah
--
(No facts were harmed in the making of this post.)
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
Daniel R. Reitman
Just as long as everyone remembers that eggcreams have neither egg nor
cream.
Dan, ad nauseam