Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Color associations

From:Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
Date:Monday, September 4, 2000, 22:59
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