Re: Futurese: Colours

>However,
>some problems still remain! My argument is not that there are more types
of
>one colour than another, but that a given colour term (red, for example)
is
>seen as different in quality, rather than quantity, from another (blue,
for
>example).
>How many distinct types of red can I perceive? That's easy - one, i.e.,
red.

No, "red" is not a type of red because "red" is the
general term itself. Types of red would be "scarlet",
""crimson", "salmon", "maroon", "vermillion", etc. and
others for which there is no specific word in English.


>There are other distinct-to-me colours which the colour system of English
>broadly includes in red (maroon, vermilion...) and others which are
included
>similarly in blue (cerulean, eau-de-nil(!) or whatever) but if asked, a
>native speaker of English would still intuit maroon and vermilion as
members
>of the 'red set'.
That's what makes those be types of red or types of
blue. My point is that blue covers a wider amount of
distinguishable kinds than red, and that's simply
because it covers a wider area of the spectrum.


>Similarly, speakers of those languages that have only two
>colour terms would see our colour terms as members of the 'dark set' or
>'light set'. All humans, unless they have some optical recognition
problem,
>perceive these colours on their retinas as 'colours', i.e.,
quantitatively,
>but describe them quantitatively, that is, in a cultural/linguistic
setting.

That's precisely the point of all this argument: different
languages divide the colour continuum differently, but the
IAL is intended to be culturally neutral and thus cannot
be based upon the colour terminology of one or some
natlangs--English has one term for the area it names "blue"
while Russian has two: "sinij" and "goluboj", but English
has several terms for the area of "red", "brown" and "orange"
while old Basque had just one: "gorri"--. The IAL colour
terminology has to be based on objective criteria and
regularized patterns. That's what my proposal intends to
achieve.

Cheers,
Javier