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To 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. T
by fsloth 5y ago
To 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...