Mauve and a related conlang question

Siyo!
Ihekwike Christophe Grandsire:
>
> My definition of "mauve" (I don't know if you have
> it in English too, if not
> I'm talking French here :)) ) is entirely personal
> and has nothing to do with
> the actual value the majority of people give to it.
> For most of them, "mauve"
> is a kind of light purple. For me, it's a kind of
> pinky purple. I don't know
> where I got that one, but I can't get rid of it. I
> just associate "mauve" with
> it and nothing else.
"Mauve" is very much a colour name in English.  The
word is the name of an artist (what's it called when a
word comes from a person's name?) and the school of
art that evolved around him.  When I think of mauve, I
think of the way people can't decide how to pronounce
it ( /mouv/ or /mav/ ) and I think of the 1980s, when
it was popular along with the rest of the pastels.
And I think of it as a light magenta to dark purplish
pink.  Or to be totally precise, HTML colour codes
CC6699, 996699, CC99CC, and 993366 (you can look it up
online to see what they look like).  Those four
colours I would automatically call mauve.

Okay, now here's a conlang question--how do your
conlangs deal with colour?  Kayasanoda has ten words
for colours that can be modified "light" and "dark",
or can be joined like the classic
Crayolas--"red-violet" and "yellow-orange", like that.
 My "essential" colour words  are:
1 black
2 white
3 grey
4 brown
5 red
6 orange
7 yellow
8 green
9 blue
10 purple
IIRC, all of the words are derived from Cherokee
except "purple", because Cherokee has no word for it.
I took the French "violet" and "Kayasized" it as
"yole" /"jole/  Perhaps I took "brown" from "marron",
but I don't remember and I don't feel like looking it
up.

Dana
Clint

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com

Replies