Re: Color associations

On Mon, 4 Sep 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 04, 2000 at 02:53:34PM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> > On Mon, 4 Sep 2000, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> >
> > 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..
>
I knew I was being cliche in this area.  :-/  I could've used white,
which connotes death in some cultures (Japanese?), and I think somewhere
in the China area maroon does the same thing, but I don't remember where
I read that.  (White to me also carries connotations of those generally
awful Mercedes Lackey fantasy novels set in Valdemar.)  Mainly it was for
aesthetic reasons: artwise I'm best with stylized forms, and India ink
and brush are great media.  :-)  I'm probably also suffering the solemn
color-connotations of black in my cultural learnings.

> 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.
There's no one particular philosophy in my associated conculture--rather,
there *are* general principles most people agree with, but religion is
mostly folk religion and therefore rather scattered and subject to lots
of differing interpretation.  I like the "strong" forms: it's a neat idea.

> > 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. :-)
Well, artistically I'm heavily biased toward the green-blue-violet end of
the spectrum, so I have to force myself to use other colors, and it shows
in my writing as well.  I just *like* those colors.  I still can't bring
myself to use yellow extensively; I think it's a horrible color, but
maybe that's because most shades of yellow look horrible on most Asians
IMHO.  :-p

YHL