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In many languages the distinction is quite blurred. In Japanese, most color words like 茶色 chairo (brown), 灰色 hairo (gray), 黄色 kiiro (yellow), 紅色 beniiro (crims

In many languages the distinction is quite blurred. In Japanese, most color words like 茶色 chairo (brown), 灰色 hairo (gray), 黄色 kiiro (yellow), 紅色 beniiro (crimson/red) incorporate the word "iro" (color), but while the first two are tea-color and ash-color, ki 黄 and beni 紅 now just mean "yellow" and "red" respectively.

schoen 6y ago
It looks like 黄 and 紅 never had a distinctive non-color meaning (as characters) without 色, so maybe using them without 色 is more a recovery of their historic meanings rather than an invention of a new meaning? (That's just a guess, I especially don't know the roles that written and spoken forms have played in the evolution of these meanings, or whether spoken "ki" and "beni" did or didn't have independent meanings.)
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  I can provide some non-native commentary on modern Mandarin Chinese. All color terms are most ordinarily used with 色 ("color"); it is unusual, though possible, to use a color term by itself. It doesn't seem like a big stretch to imagine that this was also true when the terminology was borrowed into Japan from China, and that's why the 色 gets used in Japanese.
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    I can't claim to be an expert, but this is likely correct. The native Japanese words for color (shiro, kuro, aka, ao, midori etc) don't use the -色/iro suffix.
    - EE84M3i 6y ago
      Note that you still can use the the iro/color suffix for aka (red), ao (blue), midori (green), you just don't have to and they also function as standalone adjectives. E.g. akai (赤い) -- red (adjective) vs akairo (赤色) -- the color red (noun) compare: chaiiroi (茶色い) -- light brown (adjective) vs chaiiro (茶色) the color light brown (noun) -- literally "tea color"
    - naniwaduni 6y ago
      Japanese has the cool feature that you can clearly identify siro/kuro/aka/ao (a fairly typical four-way white/black/red-yellow/blue-green distinction) as the most basic colour words with relatively little diachronic analysis: they're the ones that stand alone in the rather limited class of 形容詞 ("i-adjective") stems. You can almost trace the development of colour terms through the vocabulary strata...

schoen 6y ago

It looks like 黄 and 紅 never had a distinctive non-color meaning (as characters) without 色, so maybe using them without 色 is more a recovery of their historic meanings rather than an invention of a new meaning? (That's just a guess, I especially don't know the roles that written and spoken forms have played in the evolution of these meanings, or whether spoken "ki" and "beni" did or didn't have independent meanings.)

thaumasiotes 6y ago
I can provide some non-native commentary on modern Mandarin Chinese. All color terms are most ordinarily used with 色 ("color"); it is unusual, though possible, to use a color term by itself. It doesn't seem like a big stretch to imagine that this was also true when the terminology was borrowed into Japan from China, and that's why the 色 gets used in Japanese.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  I can't claim to be an expert, but this is likely correct. The native Japanese words for color (shiro, kuro, aka, ao, midori etc) don't use the -色/iro suffix.
  - EE84M3i 6y ago
    Note that you still can use the the iro/color suffix for aka (red), ao (blue), midori (green), you just don't have to and they also function as standalone adjectives. E.g. akai (赤い) -- red (adjective) vs akairo (赤色) -- the color red (noun) compare: chaiiroi (茶色い) -- light brown (adjective) vs chaiiro (茶色) the color light brown (noun) -- literally "tea color"
  - naniwaduni 6y ago
    Japanese has the cool feature that you can clearly identify siro/kuro/aka/ao (a fairly typical four-way white/black/red-yellow/blue-green distinction) as the most basic colour words with relatively little diachronic analysis: they're the ones that stand alone in the rather limited class of 形容詞 ("i-adjective") stems. You can almost trace the development of colour terms through the vocabulary strata...