Re: Mauve and a related conlang question

En réponse à Clint Jackson Baker <litrex1@...>:

>
> "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.
Really? I thought it came from the name of a flower... At least in French I
think it does (just like "violet", by the way :)) ).

  When I think of mauve, I
> think of the way people can't decide how to pronounce
> it ( /mouv/ or /mav/ )
In French simply /mov/, regularly from its spelling :)) (although I hear people
saying /mOv/, it sounds desperately vulgar this way).

 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.
>
I would agree with you on those. They are quite what I had in mind (though my
mauve can also refer to warmer colours, containing a bit more pink then the
ones you pointed at :)) ).

> Okay, now here's a conlang question--how do your
> conlangs deal with colour?
It's usually something I don't work on (shame on me). The only exception is
with Moten, with which I worked the colour system very thoroughly :)) .

  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
Moten actually doesn't have colour names. It only has the noun |va|: colour,
which it can compount with plenty of other nouns to make colour names. But
those are transparent compounds. As a result, you don't have "pure" colours
like "red" or "blue" in Moten, but only colours that refer to the colour of an
existing object. For instance, |emeva| means "sun's colour" and refers thus to
a bright yellow. |kunemeva| means "setting sun's colour" and refers thus to a
dark red, while  ||zajemeva| (|z is a letter in Moten) means "rising sun's
colour" and refers to a reddish orange. |bo| means "sky" (or more exactly "day
sky", and thus |bova| refers to "sky blue". |dod| is "night" and thus |dodva|
is "night colour", or "dark blue". |vone| is "water", and |voneva| refers to a
greenish blue. Some colours are highly metaphorical, like |da|nava|: "the
colour of life" which is a light green, |ude|lava|: "humble colour" which
refers to indigo (a colour so humble that you often don't know that you see
it :)) ), or |motenva| which is a bright purple (the reason why the name of the
language is used for this colour is unknown).

So Moten doesn't have primary colours. The only exceptions are "black"
and "white", which are respectively |meva|: "no-colour" and |nuva|: "all-
colour". A consequence of the lack of primary colours is that the colours in
Moten are highly descriptive, and more limited in their use. |kunemeva| means
red, but cannot be used for hair for instance. To describe red hair, you have
to use the word |adva|: "fire colour".

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Replies