Re: Futurese: Colours

>There's a bit of an intractable problem here, isn't there? Clearly, you
want
>your IAL to be as mutually intelligible as possible, but I don't think
that
>treating colours as simply RGB values will work.
How many times will I have to explain that I'm not
treating colours RGB-way nor anything close to that?
I'm just taking the basic colours of RGB and CYM
as the reference for the six essential colours.
Any other connection with RGB and CYM systems of
colour analysis is purely coincidental.


>An analogy might be to define 'large' as (say) 'anything greater than 2
>metres' and small as 'anything smaller than 2 metres'. Of course, that
would
>not be sensible. In the same way, colours are not perceived
quantitatively,
>but culturally. We don't, for instance, regard red as something more than
>blue (even though its wavelength is greater), but something different to
>blue.
How many distinct kinds of red can you perceive?
Then, compare that with how many comparably
distinct kinds of blue. That should prove you that
blue is a concept whose semantic scope is way larger
than that of red (let alone yellow or orange). OTOH,
Russian speakers don't agree with English speakers
in considering blue as a single unity, for them there
are two distinct colours there each with a scope more
or less the same size as that of English red.


>Speaking personally, I think I might well need a portable colorimeter
>to distinguish khaki from olive.
Well, if so, then we're not using those words to
refer to the same colours. The one I was referring
to as "khaki" is clearly yellowish, even brownish,
while the one I was naming olive is distinctively
greenish.

Cheers,
Javier

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