----- Original Message -----
From: "Christophe Grandsire" <christophe.grandsire@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 7:59 PM
Subject: Re: CHAT: Orange
Sorry Christophe, I have to disagree. I think you'll find colours are
culturally determined, at least as regards language. If your language has no
term for indigo then it is a kind of blue, and orange is a kind of yellow or
red. Welsh, for instance, has three words that translate 'green' (gwyrdd,
ir, glas) though glas also translates blue or grey. Llwyd (hence the name
Lloyd) means both grey and light brown. The divisions of the
rainbow/spectrum into clearly-delimited colours is a very recent idea, and I
find tends to be used purely scientifically, or in that sort of context.
> Grr... I hate this kind of remarks. Saying that indigo is a kind of blue
is
> like saying that orange is a kind of red or green is a kind of blue. The
fact
> that the Japanese didn't have a separate word for green and blue (both
being
> aoi) doesn't mean that green and blue are the same colour, nor that the
> Japanese can't make the difference (they can, as well as anybody else).
Indigo
> is *not* a kind of blue. Blue stops on the spectrum where indigo begins.
That's
> the definition of the colour and no other. What you perceive is something
else,
> and you may not perceive the difference between blue and indigo, or just
> learned the word so late that you're used to call "blue" what in reality
should
> be called "indigo". Yet indigo exists as a separate colour and it is
unfair to
> put it down as "a kind of blue". It's not a kind of blue to me. To me it's
> simply the colour that goes between blue and purple (which are not
connected to
> me), just like green goes between yellow and blue or orange between red
and