Re: Futurese: Colours

On Thu, 10 Oct 2002 08:51:37 -0400, John Cowan <jcowan@...>
wrote:

>michael poxon scripsit:
>
>> There are other distinct-to-me colours which the colour system of English
>> broadly includes in red (maroon, vermilion...)
>
>Well, thuryago /Dr=j@gou/.  For me, maroon is a kind of purple, not red!
And here I was thinking that maroon was a kind of brown! Of course, maroon
isn't really any of those, but falls somewhere in the ill-defined border
area on the color chart between purple, red, and brown. It's also likely
that not everyone has exactly the same idea of which color "maroon"
represents. My Lindiga equivalent of "maroon" is a dark red with just a
little blue added, not really enough to put it into the "purple" category.
But then, Lindiga "red" includes some colors that I'd call "purple" in
English.

In Tirelat, "maroon" and "brown" are both different kinds of "red". Tirelat
would be a good example of what Berlin and Kay describe as a "Stage V"
system (black, white, red, green, yellow, and blue) except that it also has
a basic word for gray.

But supposing that we have similar ideas of what color "maroon" is supposed
to be, this would be a confirmation of the idea that color categories are
defined more by their focal centers than their boundaries. It reminds me of
the biological classification that I started using in Eklektu, with higher
categories defined in terms of relationship to a single representative
species (or genus, or family in some cases). So for instance, Eklektu had
distinct words for "red fox" (lisa) and "gray wolf" (vuk). The Arctic fox
is related to the red fox, so the word "lisa" is used. For similar reasons,
"vuk" is used for coyotes and jackals. But it's a matter of opinion which
word should be used for the bat-eared fox (Otocyon megalotis).

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