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Red is a broad group of colours. There are plenty of more specific names for types of red, like scarlet or ruby, does that qualify?
by elnate 13y ago
Red is a broad group of colours. There are plenty of more specific names for types of red, like scarlet or ruby, does that qualify?
- tehwalrus 13y agobut when you ask a non-specialist[1] "what color is this", pointing to a scarlet object, they'll say "red". They will also take longer to tell the difference between turquoise and blue than between proper green and blue, where (I think it was) Thai-speakers wouldn't[2] (who have a primary-colour word for turquoise). [1] specialist = (color-theorist, decorator) [2] http://www.pnas.org/content/104/19/7780.full http://www.pnas.org/content/104/19/7780.full actually, this article seems to talk about Russian, I'm getting the Thai thing from a discussion I remember (a video by the authors at the Long Now foundation[3].) [3] http://longnow.org/seminars/02010/oct/26/how-language-shapes-thought/ http://longnow.org/seminars/02010/oct/26/how-language-shapes...
- whatusername 13y agoAnd for the nerd comparisons: http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
- tehwalrus 13y agomost popular colour names from guys: Penis Gay WTF Dunno Baige I feel quite embarrassed for my gender at moments like this. EDIT: I didn't realise that Randall actually typed "I weep for my gender." a few lines lower down...
- apostlion 13y agoI've seen somewhere a test for how many color words are there in the language - only color-words which do not correspond to a specific material or plant which color is emulated are accepted. So “red” or “blue” is fine, as is “piros” or “vörös” - but “sky blue” (color of sky), “ruby” (color of the gemstone) or “scarlet” (color of the Scarlet cloth) are not.
- prof_hobart 13y agoSo orange wouldn't be counted as a colour in English? I'm not sure what value there is in measuring the amount of colour names in a language based purely on their etymology.
- apostlion 13y agoOrange wouldn't. By this logic, many oddities in color naming can be abstracted over languages, see for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Universality_and_Evolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Univer...
- prof_hobart 13y agoInteresting. Does this hold true for every single language?
- currymesurprise 13y agoAs a correction to my sibling comment, orange _is_ counted as a color in English. The most widely-cited list of colors in English, as seen on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_... for example is that English has eleven basic colors: white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray. That page also provides criteria for being considered a basic color term.
- SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago"the Scarlet cloth", what's that? It may have referred to something specific once, but now it's just a colour. There are many examples of things that are just a part of speech now. e.g. when was the last time you had the opportunity to actually "put the cart before the horse" or "strike while the iron is hot".
- riffraff 13y agoin english/italian etc.. I can say that magenta and scarlet are both kinds of red, but there is nothing above the hungarian voros & piros, you can only say they are both colors.