Re: New Language

Eric Christopherson wrote:
> But colors *are* relative.
Only to some extent, in the range of colors.  You're right about
borderline cases, i.e., what I think is an shade of orange, you might
think is a shade of red, or vice versa, but we all (well, all those who
aren't color-blind) agree on "core" colors.  This is even true
cross-linguistically.  A small number of languages have just two colors,
black/dark and white/light, some have a third, and this is always red
(usually including orange and perhaps yellow), I forget the rest of the
color hierarchy, but those that have a word for red all agree on the
"core".  The core color is the color identified as the best specimen, so
that if you were showed a variety of colors, ranging from dark red to
orange, and asked to identify the best specimen of "red", you'd pick the
same as other folk, including those of other languages.

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