Re: NATLANG: Emergent Colours

[myself]
[...]
>Some people have commented here recently that they find colours
>such as "beige" (light brown) and "aqua/turquoise" (light
>bluegreen) to be rather basic because they use them frequently
>and think they don't fit well within the established categories.
>This is not the first time I've encountered similar comments and
>I wonder which colours, so far generally regarded as non-basic,
>people find as good candidates for new basic colour categories.
[...]
>For English, apart from the ones mentioned above, I've
>also heard of candidates such as "peach" (light orange)
>and "chartreuse" (light yellowgreen). As for the candidate
>"aqua/turquoise" vs. "blue", it could be a variant form of
>the Russian "goluboj" vs. "sinij" distinction. The emergence
>of "peach" and "beige" could be regarded as variant attempts
>at a basic category for a light shade between yellow and red.
>The finick's choice could be an elaborate partition of that
>region into, say, "salmon", "peach", "cream" and "beige/ecru"
>for its pinkish, orangish, yellowish and brownish areas,
>respectively. Some other candidates might be for example
>"maroon" (red-brown), "teal" (dark bluegreen), "olive" (dark
>yellowgreen) and "navy" (dark blue). As a colour, I find
>"taupe" (grey-brown) to be sufficiently differentiated from
>both focal brown and focal grey to deserve a category of
>its own, but AFAIK the term is still rather fancy.
>
>So, well, the poll for emergent basic colours is open.
So, well, it seems the topic didn't interest much. Anyway,
here you are my personal results: I find that I feel pretty
comfortable with the following partition of the non-reddish
part of the colour space,

- the basic percepts
BLUE - GREEN - YELLOW

- their light and dark versions
AZURE, NAVY - MINT (GLAUCOUS), CORBEAU (FOREST, BOTTLE)
- BEIGE (CREAM, ECRU), OCHRE (TAWNY, MUSTARD)

- their vivid and dull intermediates
TURQUOISE (AQUA), TEAL - CHARTREUSE, OLIVE

I have an image of the scheme, in case someone is interested
in seeing this neat partition directly.

I'm still unsure about which and how many partitions make
me feel most comfortable in the reddish part of the colour
space, though I know I want to separate at least lilac,
violet and reddish purple, reddish and yellowish brown
(French marron and brun) (maybe dark brown (umber) and
dull/greyish brown (taupe) too), dark from plain red,
reddish yellow (amber/tan/gold) from yellow, and salmon
from pink (or peach from orange, or maybe both); possibly
also dark/brownish orange (sienna) from orange and brown.

In the achromatic region, I'm pretty sure I want to separate
at least light grey (gainsboro/silver) from plain/dark grey.

As for distinctions based on glossiness, I think it's easy
to distinguish gold from yellow, copper/bronze from brown,
silver/metal from grey, jet black from pitch black (Latin
niger vs. ater) and shiny white from off-white (Latin
candidus vs. albus).

Cheers,
Javier