Re: What counts as a basic color word?

I think I read about this. They said there was a maximum 11  basic
colour words didn't they? The problem is, russian for instance splits
blue into two words which are both in very common use (and has 10 other
words besides making 12), and welsh divides the spectrum differently, so
what we would consider green (the colour of plants) comes under the same
word as the word for blue, and the word green covers only some of the
shades of what we'd call green. Unfortunately the usage is more like
English now because of the fact that English has had a big influence in
Wales in recent centures. I'm sure you could find lots of examples like
that... things like that reduce the meaning of their research, because
even if you can identify 11 basic colour words which translate roughly
into the english colour words they listed, there will be some cases when
the translation is very rough indeed, and the english rough translation
does not give you a good idea at all about what part of the spectrum the
word covers (which seems to me to make the list almost useless). Here is
the list of 11 basic colours they suggested by the way:

White <- red <- Green <- Blue <-  Brown <- Purple
Black                 Yellow                                  Pink
                                                                      Orange
                                                                      Grey

And how welsh used to divide the green brown part of the spectrum:

     green       |  blue |     grey       |  brown
---------------------------------------
gwyrdd  |         glas          |    llwyd

I just got this out of one of my books, so if its wrong please tell me
and I'll make a note somewhere lol.

Chris.

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