Re: Quest for colours: what's basic then?

On Friday, April 23, 2004, at 06:43 AM, Joe wrote in reply to me:
[snip]
>
> Well, I meant that I didn't believe it was neccesary to exclude
> borrowings, because basic colour-ness can change with time.
We're both agreed on that point.
=================================================================
On Friday, April 23, 2004, at 02:22 PM, Adam Walker wrote:

> --- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
>> The borrowing argument needs to be used with care
>> IMO.
>
> I agree completely.  That's why I pointed out that one
> of the original criterion should exclude two colors
> that *modern* English couldn't conviniently dispense
> with.
Sorry - misread you; I was probably reading too hastily.

>> Consider that
>> "albus", Latin word for 'white', does not survive as
>> an adjective in any
>> of the Romancelangs (only as a fem. noun meaning
>> 'dawn', cf. It. l'alba,
>> Fr. l'aube).
>
> Not so.  Romanian has abl - white, and Vegliot had
> yaulb - white, so it survived in Eastern Romance.
Darn! I knew I should've checked Romanian - yep, it's "alb" alright. Mea
culpa - I should've said it did not survive in _western_ Romance, except
as a feminine noun meaning 'dawn'.

>> The western Romancelangs all borrowed
>> the Germanic blank- (cf.
>>   English 'blank'). Does this mean that white is not
>> a basic color among
>> Romance speakers? The French also borrowed 'bleu'
>> from Germanic . So blue
>> is not a basic color among the French?
>>
>
> Exactly.  Which along with the English data would seem
> to go a long way toward debunking that particular
> criterion for determining "core-ness".
Agreed.
====================================================================
On Friday, April 23, 2004, at 08:10 AM, Philippe Caquant wrote:

> I found on the Web the information that "tanne" (e
> acute in French) was a specific color belonging to
> English heraldic. I neve heard that name for French
> heraldic. It seems it was a "dark orange" (orange
> fonce')
Except that in English heraldry it's _tenné_ (with _e_, not _a_ as in
French). From Old French is derived the 'ordinary' English adjective "tawn(
e)y", to denote a yellowish-brown color. The adj. is IME almost only used
when describing certain birds. The heraldic tenné was an orange-brown
color; but it wasn't common and seems to be regarded as not one of the
'basic' colors, which I listed in my previous mail.

The heraldic colors BTW are not called 'colo(u)rs' in heraldry; rather we
have:
- two _metals_: or (yellow, i.e. 'gold'), argent (white, i.e. 'silver')
- four commonly used _tinctures_: gules (red), azure (blue), sable (black)
, vert (green), purpure (purple)

('vert" BTW rhymes with 'shirt' - the French for 'vert' is "sinople" as
both I & Philippe have said  :)

In addition to these commonly used 'basic' metals & tinctures, three other
tinctures are occasionally found:
tenné - orange-brown
murrey - dark purple ('color of mulberry')
sanguine - dark red (i.e. blood-red)

I mention the heraldic colors only because they possibly give a guide to
what the medievals perceived as basic colors, which is what this thread is
about.
 =========================================================================
=================
On Friday, April 23, 2004, at 05:28 PM, Amanda Babcock wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 21, 2004 at 05:37:01PM -0400, Javier BF wrote:
>
>> In Spanish, "azul" refers to any blue, it is not
>> restricted to light blue like the English subcategory
>> "azure" or the Russian category "goluboj";
>
> I am amazed to find out that "azure" in English means
> "light blue".  I always assumed it was a particularly
> saturated, overwhelming deep blue - like a good sapphire.
Nope - in heraldry 'azure' is, like Spanish, "azul" used just to mean
'blue'. It is still occasionally used thus even now very, very
occasionally in non-heraldic contexts; but the more specific modern
meaning is the color of the sky on a clear sunny day (as it is here, today
  :)

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com    (home)
raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk   (work)
===============================================
"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760

Reply