Colour Terms

From: John Hughes <john.hughes_at_anu.edu.au>
Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 11:00:06 +1000

Stephen:

> >Does Pelorian (or Dara Happan, or whatever language that was
> >'originally' written in) treat blue and green as separate colours? Or
> >is it one of the many languages that uses the same basic word for
> >both?

A bit of a diversion....

Of interest for more general rp design and your own worlds and cultures, colour terms do not appear to enter languages in an arbitrary fashion.

Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (Basic Color Terms, 1969) showed that colour lexicons are not carved up arbitrarily. Colours evoke a cognitive response that is language independent, and as colour terms within a language increase, they do so in a fixed order.

Some languages use all eleven basic terms, some use as few as two. There is no difference in colour *perception* of course, in the same way that a tribesperson who can only count to four will be able to recognise, name and describe all of the ninety different beasts in their flock.

Anthrowaffle aside, here's the chart. :)

1. black, white (more appropriately 'cool' (covering black, blue, green and grey) and 'warm' (covering white, yellow, orange and red)).
2. red.

When a language has three basic colour terms, they are black, white and red.

3. yellow, blue, green.

When a language has four basic terms, the fourth is one of the above. So some languages may have a basic term for blue but not green. The fifth and sixth are also one of the above.

4. brown

5. purple, pink, orange, gray.

Pentans talking about 'The Warm Goddess' and the 'White Sun'? It works for me... :)

We now return you to your usual program.

John    

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