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

Adam Walker wrote:

> Personally, I *think* in terms of the following colors
> - black, white, grey, red, green, blue, yellow,
> orange, purple, pink, beige, aqua and brown.
>
> I do not think of beige as being brown any more than I
> think of pink as being red or grey as being black.  I
> also do not accept aqua as being categorizable as
> either blue or green.
Pink to me is just a light shade of red, as tan is a light shade of
brown, and lavender a light shade of purple. I defined the basic colors
in Lindiga as red, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, and black; there
are also words for intermediate colors, but these aren't "basic" color
words; orange in Lindiga is a variety of red, for instance. Lindiga has
a word "silki" [Silgi] meaning "turquoise", which is on the border
between blue and green (not pure cyan, but a bit more green).

The complete set of named Lindiga colors is at:
http://www.io.com/~hmiller/png/lindiga-colors.png

Of the 10 basic and intermediate Lindiga hues, I perceive "ligwi"
[liGwi] as just a variety of green (the spelling on the chart "lichvi"
is out of date), and "ntiki" [ndZiki] as a variety of blue. "Marsni"
[maz`n`i] is a reddish magenta, but I still think of it more as a shade
of purple. But "narrsi" [narzi] seems like a distinct basic color
(probably from the influence of "orange" in English), and "silki"
doesn't comfortably fit into either "werrti" [werdZi] (green) or "lampi"
[lambi] (blue).

Of the three "light" colors that have Lindiga names, only "takni"
[tagni] (tan) seems distinct enough to be marginally considered as a
basic color; it's not only lighter than "prroni" [brOJi] (brown), but
also more yellowish where "prroni" is more reddish. "Pinki" [piNgi] is
just a light red, and "laurni" [lQUn`i] (lavender) a light purple.

The other marginally basic colors are the dark/dull colors "lolwi"
[lOlHi] (olive), "prroni", and "mlovi" [mlOvi] (mauve). But "mlovi" just
seems like a dull purple, while "lolwi" seems greenish (even though it's
actually more yellow than green).