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Keep in mind, just because historical Japanese (or anybody) didn't have a name for a given color doesn't mean they couldn't talk about it. There's no reason the
by fenomas 9y ago
Keep in mind, just because historical Japanese (or anybody) didn't have a name for a given color doesn't mean they couldn't talk about it. There's no reason they couldn't have talked about specific things as being the color of leaves, the sky, oceans, and so forth.
All that's being talked about here is how societies decide to group up or split apart general categories of colors, not whether their language allows them to talk about specific things of various colors.
- Sangermaine 9y agoYou've just restated what I wrote.
- fenomas 9y agoI disagree. Note that it wasn't a counter-argument, just added comment. Incidentally if you're interested, the historical "ao" didn't really refer to a specific band of the the visible light spectrum as you suggest, it could mean any pale or ill-defined color, with "red" being used for any strong vivid color. Per wikipedia, anyway.