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Languages, words for colours, blue/green | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5574 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 17 of 20 23 May 2010 at 9:19am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Physically speaking, colors can be pretty vague too. If I were to look at the green plants in front of my apartment, I would be seeing a continuous spectra representing that plant's "green," but a digital camera would capture that same color as a discrete combination of 3 wavelengths. The two could not be more physically different, but it turns out that our eyes and our brain are unable to distinguish the two.
It is in fact entirely arbitrary to say that one color (say, cyan) is a shade of another (blue), but another (green) is not. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cherepaha Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6589 days ago 126 posts - 175 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Polish, Latin, French | Message 18 of 20 23 May 2010 at 9:21am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Russian language uses the word "красный" (red) as an antiquated way of referring to beauty: 'Красный 'молодец (stately/handsome young man) 'Красна/я 'девица (beautiful young girl) 'Красно/е 'солонышко (beautiful Sun) Hence, as a small child I knew I could draw the Sun using a yellow, an orange or a red color. Yet I also remember in preschool asking my parents why do we draw it this way, if the Sun seems white when you look at it. The answer was, that no one would see a white pencil on the white paper, so I remember choosing yellow more frequently, as it was closer to white. On the other hand the sunset sun was frequently red. :)
This is very interesting, and makes sense, since in Russian we frequently argue whether something is "голубое" or "скорее голубое" rather than "синее", so we are forced to consider that, while for the English language speakers that kind of a discussion would be pointless except perhaps in the print production or graphic design worlds :).
I disagree with the author of that article on their comparison of the "синий"/"голубой" distinction to that of yellow and orange. I think a much more appropriate comparison is with that of red / pink. At least in Russian we add "white" + "red" and get a "pink", and in exactly the same manner we add "white" + blue ("синий") and get a "cyan" ("голубой"). [One has to add "red" + "yellow" to get an "orange".]
Indeed the word "голубой" can be used as a euphemism for a male homosexual person. However, it cannot be used to form derivative word forms, so an English phrase "this is so gay!" cannot be expressed in Russian using the word "голубой". This way, since the colloquial usage of "голубой" as "gay" is limited (i.e. you can only make a direct statement "so and so is gay (голубой)", it'll be hard to be misunderstood, unless you are talking about a Marsian with blue skin. ;) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Mountain Goat Diglot Newbie Denmark Joined 5366 days ago 10 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: Pashto Studies: Urdu | Message 19 of 20 23 May 2010 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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In Pashto there's also a single word for green and blue; شين (shin). Interesting that it's the case in several languages. I don't even think the colors are that alike, except in the darker shades.
(a seperate word for blue in Pashto is نيلی (niley) btw) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5135 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian* | Message 20 of 20 22 December 2015 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Well, Indonesian has terms equivalent with "faded green" (lime), "grass green" (light green), "leaf green" (green), and "feces green" (olive, I guess) as well as "brick red" (maroon), "bloody red" (crimson), and "rose apple red" (pink). Oh, and "sky purple" for violet. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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