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I have wondered with colour words if the increasing prevalence of computers and their related vocabulary is influencing English speakers use of colour words. F
by NeoTar 3y ago
I have wondered with colour words if the increasing prevalence of computers and their related vocabulary is influencing English speakers use of colour words.
For instance, as mentioned in the article English speakers have historically divided the range of colours into: Black, White, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Purple, Brown, Orange and Grey. South American Spanish, along with Italian and Russian add a distinction between light-blue and dark-blue (maybe like the distinction between Red and Pink).
In computers the most natural set of colours is more like: Black, White, Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. Has this influenced English speakers to draw incorporate new colour terms into their common vocabulary - Magenta 'feels' too close to pink to be a new colour for me, but Cyan (or equivalently Turquoise or Azure) feels different enough to be a new and distinct colour.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoIn France purple is not in the set. We have blue, white, red (obviously), black, yellow, green, gray. No orange, no purple, no brown - we of course know these colors but we would not use them when "dividing" colors into sets.
- solardev 3y agoWhat color is the soil?
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoThe color of the soil. All of the languages with a paucity of dedicated color words can readily describe colors by reference. Orange, pink, and violet are not actual color words either. They've been imported to perform dual duty from their original meaning because they were used frequently enough to describe the color of oranges, pinks, and violets.
- solardev 3y agoWhat are pinks and violets? I didn't even know those were objects. And I think I learned the color orange before I knew what an orange was?
- 1317 3y agoviolets are objects, they're a type of flower. not sure about pink though edit: pink is also a type of flower
- Modified3019 3y agoDefinitely not intuitive unless you already know what they are, but in this case refers to taxanomic naming of some plant families. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caryophyllaceae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caryophyllaceae >Caryophyllaceae, commonly called the pink family or carnation family https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violaceae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violaceae >Violaceae is a family of flowering plants … It takes its name from the genus Viola, the violets and pansies.
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoNot sure what you mean. Probably brown, why?
- solardev 3y agoI just mean that if brown isn't a common color word there, what do school children etc use to describe that color? Here in the US, "brown" is difference enough from the other colors that I would struggle to find another word for it. "Dark orange" seems really strange, or "yellowish red" is weird too.
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoOP mentioned that English speakers have historically divided the range of colours into: Black, White, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Purple, Brown, Orange and Grey. I read it as some kind of spectrum or "main colors" - it does not list all known colors but a set where the others would more or less fit in. This is also not the visual spectrum because gray or black are not there. For us in France, this spectrum would list the colors I mentioned and it would be good enough to characterize what colors we have. Brown, pink, orange, ... are not part of them, like gold or silver is not either, or salmon or azur. This is of course a limiting set and we use on an everyday basis "brown", as much as "orange" or "blue", it is just that it is not, historically or culturally, part of the set of "basic colors". Since colors are not a physical concept anyway, there is a lot of space for interpretation so I would not be surprised if other countries have other sets of basic colors.
- solardev 3y agoAhhh, I get what you're saying now. It's like in the US we divide the rainbow into "ROYGBIV" (red orange yellow green blue indigo violet), which was quite different from how I learned it in grade school in another country. But in both situations there are still a variety of other color names in common usage.* So it's the same there. Maybe "brown" (brun?) is common, but it just wouldn't be used as a broad grouping. Thanks for clarifying. * After learning the rainbow in one language/culture, we then learned about the spectrum in science class. Only after that did I learn the US divisions, ROYGBIV seemed as arbitrary as any other division. I guess there's many ways to do this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_color#Spectral_color_terms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_color#Spectral_color_...
- kens 3y agoI'm not sure what distinction you are making between marron (brown), violet, and orange in French from other basic colors. Can you clarify this?
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoOP mentioned that English speakers have historically divided the range of colours into: Black, White, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Purple, Brown, Orange and Grey. When we think about "basic colors", we would not add purple, brown or orange to the set. Grey neither know that I think of it.
- rubatuga 3y agoComputers, especially the sRGB colorspace is severely lacking in the green region. There are many colours that humans can sense that have no corresponding RGB value.
- esafak 3y agoIt is interesting that Newton eschewed purple for indigo and violet in the rainbow because he wanted it to have seven colors (it actually doesn't have discrete colors).