Re: Color associations

On Mon, Sep 04, 2000 at 02:53:34PM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Sep 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>
> > Just wondering tho... does anybody's conlangs carry any such color
> > associations with them? Color in my conlang is very heavily loaded with
> > con-philosophical connotations. Any other conlangs that do this? Just
> > curious :-)
>
> Once I get the colors made up, they *will.*  <wry g>  Black carries
> connotations with death, mainly because the death-god is also associated
> with the moon, and with night; it's also used to stand for justice, since
> magistrates (who are institutionally descended from the death-god's
> priests and arbitrators) wear black.
Interesting how black is usually associated with death or termination. Or
just solemn things (like justice/judgment) in general. In my conlang,
black is almost cognate with vyy'i, a word which I've said a bit on,
before -- implying termination, death, destruction, waste disposal, etc..

> The other four elements have an associated color: white for air, blue for
> water, red for fire and yellow (or possibly green; I haven't decided yet,
> since I *like* green better) for earth.
My conlang's general color associations are a little odd... mainly because
I've decided to tie in their entire philosophy and the physics of the
con-universe with color associations. Red represents source, origin,
initiative, divergence; green represents destination, conclusion,
culmination, convergence, or termination; blue represents the
"in-between": spaciousness, movement, and sometimes, complexity. White is
considered to be a "strong" form of red as far as connotations go; and
black is considered to be a "strong" form of green in terms of
connotations.

>
> That's about as far as it goes, other than colors for cantons' or
> provinces' uniform-sashes.  I'm not very good with color symbolism.
Neither am I, I basically just "assigned" an abstract meaning to each
color, and derived everything from there. :-)


T