5 ms·

This is super cool. It's interesting that a lot of color names listed here are pointing to actual things. Just like in english we'd have the "orange" color bac

by hrktb 7y ago

This is super cool. It's interesting that a lot of color names listed here are pointing to actual things. Just like in english we'd have the "orange" color backed by the average color of oranges. I also think they would only be used in phrases with the "xxxx color" cosntruct, and not as we'd say "blue" or "green". For instance azuki is a popular grain, so you'd say a shirt is "azuki color" and not just "azuki" IMO. That makes is a bit of cheating, as then anything can be set as a color, for instance "UPS color" or "post box color" or "Xbox death ring color". But I guess our very history with naming colors is very ad hoc anyway.

klodolph 7y ago
How is this cheating? When you go for a palette in English, you pick from colors such as salmon, coral, wheat, eggplant, eggshell, etc. Meanwhile, the construct “xxx color” in Japanese is used for very ordinary colors like brown (tea color), gray (ash color), and yellow (uhhh… yellow color).
- the_pwner224 7y ago
  What I believe gp means by cheating is that a color name is not a new construct, but just the name of a colored object with 'color; appended. Whereas in English a color name becomes distinct from the object. 'Orange' is a color name, inspired by the fruit but now an independent name; the Japanese cheating way would be calling it 'orange color,' referring to the fruit - in this case orange is not a color name. In 2000 years even if oranges are extinct or evolved out of existence we'll still be using 'orange' as a color, but the Japanese will no longer call it 'orange color.'
  - klodolph 7y ago
    > What I believe gp means by cheating is that a color name is not a new construct, but just the name of a colored object with 'color; appended. Whereas in English a color name becomes distinct from the object. The claim that the Japanese terms are somehow “not independent” from the objects and would disappear if the objects disappeared smacks of armchair linguistics to me. I could equally claim that women have fewer teeth than men do, as Aristotle did. Apparently he never bothered to count them. If you keep repeating the idea that the Japanese language is somehow “cheating” whereas the English version is fundamentally different and inventing whole new words that are now divorced from their original meaning, I would like to see at least a small amount of reasoning or research to support it. The claims just don’t make sense at face value. There has been a ton of research into the linguistics of color names. And… if you are just trying to explain gp’s position rather than argue for it yourself, please don’t do that.
    - hrktb 7y ago
      To clarify a bit, I didn't mean cheating in a much negative way. Using physical goods as reference to color is the basic evolution for everyone. As I understand it "blue" in english for instance was initially pointing to a concrete thing (lead?) as well, but the words went through many transitions isolating the world for the color from its original counterpart. But I think in english the concepts still stay more separated, for instance "rose" as a color has parted a lot from the common perception of an actual rose's color. Or looking at Faber Castel's color chart for instance [1], pink declinations are all defined relative to "pink", in contrast on the article's chart we'll have declinations like Ume (plum), Sakura (cherry), Ichigo (strawberry). I am not saying one is better, or one is lazier. [1] https://www.faber-castell.fr/produits/CrayondecouleurPolychromosrougegéraniumclair/110121 https://www.faber-castell.fr/produits/CrayondecouleurPolychr...
      - klodolph 7y ago
        > But I think in english the concepts still stay more separated, … My question is, why do you think that? It sounds like an unfounded assertion to me. I hear you repeating claims but color names have been extensively studied in linguistics, and you have direct access to Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias online, and you can type Japanese color names into Google image search, so it should be relatively easy to come up with even a small bit of evidence. > …for instance "rose" as a color has parted a lot from the common perception of an actual rose's color. If you look up “rose color” in Japanese Wikipedia, you’ll see that it specifically defines it as a shade between red and magenta, even though roses come in many different shades (yellow, orange, white, cream, etc). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%96%94%E8%96%87%E8%89%B2 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%96%94%E8%96%87%E8%89%B2 The problem here is that I am not a Japanese speaker, but this seems to be evidence that the term “rose color” is a specific color, and not a term that means “the color of a rose”. “Peach color” is also interesting. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%A1%83%E8%89%B2 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%A1%83%E8%89%B2 Unlike English, this color is not the color of a peach fruit. It is also not the color of a peach blossom, despite the fact that “peach-blossom color” is listed as a synonym. Instead, it is the color that fabric takes when dyed with peach blossoms, but the practice of dyeing cloth with peach blossoms has fallen out of usage. You will find a different set of colors if you do a Google image search for 桃花 (peach blossom) and 桃花色 (peach blossom color). (You may find some sexual material in your image search, so maybe don’t do the search in the office.) So the term “peach color” in Japanese refers to a specific shade of pink which is divorced from its meaning. I guess English isn’t special after all.
jachee 7y ago
I still don't know if the fruit or the color come first with orange.
- klodolph 7y ago
  The fruit came first. It comes from French, which took it from Arabic, which now calls an “orange” by the name “Portugal”. Before the fruit appeared, we had the word “geoluread” which was literally just “yellowred”.
  - JdeBP 7y ago
    We also had (the antecedents of) "brown". (-: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22324298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22324298)

by hrktb 7y ago

klodolph 7y ago

How is this cheating? When you go for a palette in English, you pick from colors such as salmon, coral, wheat, eggplant, eggshell, etc. Meanwhile, the construct “xxx color” in Japanese is used for very ordinary colors like brown (tea color), gray (ash color), and yellow (uhhh… yellow color).

the_pwner224 7y ago
What I believe gp means by cheating is that a color name is not a new construct, but just the name of a colored object with 'color; appended. Whereas in English a color name becomes distinct from the object. 'Orange' is a color name, inspired by the fruit but now an independent name; the Japanese cheating way would be calling it 'orange color,' referring to the fruit - in this case orange is not a color name. In 2000 years even if oranges are extinct or evolved out of existence we'll still be using 'orange' as a color, but the Japanese will no longer call it 'orange color.'
- klodolph 7y ago
  > What I believe gp means by cheating is that a color name is not a new construct, but just the name of a colored object with 'color; appended. Whereas in English a color name becomes distinct from the object. The claim that the Japanese terms are somehow “not independent” from the objects and would disappear if the objects disappeared smacks of armchair linguistics to me. I could equally claim that women have fewer teeth than men do, as Aristotle did. Apparently he never bothered to count them. If you keep repeating the idea that the Japanese language is somehow “cheating” whereas the English version is fundamentally different and inventing whole new words that are now divorced from their original meaning, I would like to see at least a small amount of reasoning or research to support it. The claims just don’t make sense at face value. There has been a ton of research into the linguistics of color names. And… if you are just trying to explain gp’s position rather than argue for it yourself, please don’t do that.
  - hrktb 7y ago
    To clarify a bit, I didn't mean cheating in a much negative way. Using physical goods as reference to color is the basic evolution for everyone. As I understand it "blue" in english for instance was initially pointing to a concrete thing (lead?) as well, but the words went through many transitions isolating the world for the color from its original counterpart. But I think in english the concepts still stay more separated, for instance "rose" as a color has parted a lot from the common perception of an actual rose's color. Or looking at Faber Castel's color chart for instance [1], pink declinations are all defined relative to "pink", in contrast on the article's chart we'll have declinations like Ume (plum), Sakura (cherry), Ichigo (strawberry). I am not saying one is better, or one is lazier. [1] https://www.faber-castell.fr/produits/CrayondecouleurPolychromosrougegéraniumclair/110121 https://www.faber-castell.fr/produits/CrayondecouleurPolychr...
    - klodolph 7y ago
      > But I think in english the concepts still stay more separated, … My question is, why do you think that? It sounds like an unfounded assertion to me. I hear you repeating claims but color names have been extensively studied in linguistics, and you have direct access to Japanese dictionaries and encyclopedias online, and you can type Japanese color names into Google image search, so it should be relatively easy to come up with even a small bit of evidence. > …for instance "rose" as a color has parted a lot from the common perception of an actual rose's color. If you look up “rose color” in Japanese Wikipedia, you’ll see that it specifically defines it as a shade between red and magenta, even though roses come in many different shades (yellow, orange, white, cream, etc). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%96%94%E8%96%87%E8%89%B2 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%96%94%E8%96%87%E8%89%B2 The problem here is that I am not a Japanese speaker, but this seems to be evidence that the term “rose color” is a specific color, and not a term that means “the color of a rose”. “Peach color” is also interesting. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%A1%83%E8%89%B2 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%A1%83%E8%89%B2 Unlike English, this color is not the color of a peach fruit. It is also not the color of a peach blossom, despite the fact that “peach-blossom color” is listed as a synonym. Instead, it is the color that fabric takes when dyed with peach blossoms, but the practice of dyeing cloth with peach blossoms has fallen out of usage. You will find a different set of colors if you do a Google image search for 桃花 (peach blossom) and 桃花色 (peach blossom color). (You may find some sexual material in your image search, so maybe don’t do the search in the office.) So the term “peach color” in Japanese refers to a specific shade of pink which is divorced from its meaning. I guess English isn’t special after all.

jachee 7y ago

I still don't know if the fruit or the color come first with orange.

klodolph 7y ago
The fruit came first. It comes from French, which took it from Arabic, which now calls an “orange” by the name “Portugal”. Before the fruit appeared, we had the word “geoluread” which was literally just “yellowred”.
- JdeBP 7y ago
  We also had (the antecedents of) "brown". (-: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh4aWZRtTwU (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22324298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22324298)