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Not read the article yet but commenting while I remember... Prime Minister Gladstone who translated Homer in his spare time, thought that the ancient Greeks, or
by irthomasthomas 5y ago
Not read the article yet but commenting while I remember... Prime Minister Gladstone who translated Homer in his spare time, thought that the ancient Greeks, or at least Homer where colour blind. Gladstone said "We have a great deal of difficulty in translating Homer’s colour terms into modern western languages" Homer, apparently had the colour literacy of a modern child, he described oxen as the colour of the sky and described the sea as wine-dark. Though many of Homers colours may just be poetic. Gladstone used to argue with Tennyson, who also translated Homer. They would take turns reading to each other and then debate the relative merits of each other's choices. It takes a poet to read a poet.
- fsloth 5y agoTo my understanding the strange wording was caused by the requirements of the poetic construct the narration used. So they are filler to make other stuff fit. They are like punctuation. They are not trying to describe colors as such and should not be used as evidence how the people who spun the poem saw colors in psychological sense, I think.
- irthomasthomas 5y agoExactly so. I updated my comment to try and reflect that. Gladstone took it all too literally and would argue with Tennyson, who was better able to grasp the poetry in Homer.
- barry-cotter 5y agoIt’s entirely possible the Greek language didn’t have the requisite color words yet. There seems to be a more or less stable order in which languages acquire color terms. > Berlin and Kay also found that, in languages with fewer than the maximum eleven color categories, the colors followed a specific evolutionary pattern. This pattern is as follows: > All languages contain terms for black and white. If a language contains three terms, then it contains a term for red. If a language contains four terms, then it contains a term for either green or yellow (but not both). If a language contains five terms, then it contains terms for both green and yellow. If a language contains six terms, then it contains a term for blue. If a language contains seven terms, then it contains a term for brown. If a language contains eight or more terms, then it contains terms for purple, pink, orange or gray. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...
- lucozade 5y agoIf this hypothesis is correct then Dulux [0] must be the most evolved being ever. [0] https://www.dulux.co.uk/en/colour-details#tabId=item0 https://www.dulux.co.uk/en/colour-details#tabId=item0
- wumpus 5y agoThis smelled like Chomsky, and a quick google came up with: > Anybody want a used Kay & Berlin coloring book? My grandchildren all outgrue theirs. https://twitter.com/fakechomsky/status/139078855863447553?lang=en https://twitter.com/fakechomsky/status/139078855863447553?la...
- lonjil 5y agoI'm pretty sure the Med can actually be a bit reddish dark like wine sometimes.
- setr 5y agoI believe Greek wine was also much more dilute (they chugged the stuff) — presumably wine-dark isn’t as dark as it sounds today
- jbay808 5y ago> he described oxen as the colour of the sky So, probably a mottled light grey?