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

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Saturday, April 24, 2004, 6:57
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

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Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>