• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Perception, Colour & Language

The dutch royal family got the name Orange from a town. I believe using the colour as a national colour is quite a recent thing.
 
Xanatic* said:
The dutch royal family got the name Orange from a town. I believe using the colour as a national colour is quite a recent thing.
Click to expand...
Thank you, always happy and humbly grateful to be corrected when I get a factual point wrong - it keeps us all honest!
 
Fascinating video here:


You'll have to put up with semi-famous-guy-whose-name-escapes me mispronouncing loads of words, but the information he is imparting is very interesting.
 
AgProv said:
If the fruit had not come to Britain, would Sir Isaac Newton only have seen six colours in the prismatic spectrum and gone straight from red to yellow?
Click to expand...
Actually (slightly on topic) wasn't it the case that he put in seven because it was like More Magical? Seven having better mystical credentials. So he made up 'indigo'.

see
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/2008HisSc..46....1H/0000002.000.html
which says he wanted it to match the number of notes in a musical scale.

So we might as well have five colours in the rainbow then!

[I see your interesting video mentions this, Yithian. And that he added orange as well as indigo. Now that was going a bit far.]
 
Last edited:
Yithian said:
Fascinating video here:


You'll have to put up with semi-famous-guy-whose-name-escapes me mispronouncing loads of words, but the information he is imparting is very interesting.
Click to expand...
Fascinating, thanks for posting that. :hoff:
 
oldrover said:
Not really. In fact historically horses have never been terribly accurately depicted still or moving. In paint or sculpture. Either terribly over stylised, Stubbs, the Parthenon Frieze. Or just not well observed and executed.
Click to expand...
I've spent some considerable time contemplating this object tonight:
DJ8p17uXoAAaXI7.jpg

It predates Stubbs somewhat.
 
From Skinny.

...that may not be a physical shift so much as a social one...

Hence the scene in 'The Devil Wears Prada' where Helen Mirran is 'correcting' her knew employee regarding the colour of a garment. It wasn't 'blue' it was 'Celurian'.

INT21
 
In the heat treatment of metals it is common to find instructors telling people to 'heat the steel until it is cherry red' then quench.

However, cherries range from almost black to brilliant red. So which cherry to use ? pick the wrong one and your tool will be useless, maybe even dangerous.

Some advocate the use of 'until carrot coloured'. Most carrots are pretty much the same colour.

INT21
 
INT21 said:
From Skinny.

...that may not be a physical shift so much as a social one...

Hence the scene in 'The Devil Wears Prada' where Helen Mirran is 'correcting' her knew employee regarding the colour of a garment. It wasn't 'blue' it was 'Celurian'.

INT21
Click to expand...
Cerulean.
 
I stand corrected.

There was some doubt in my mind about the spelling, but the spell checker didn't offer a choice.

I knew it would be spotted if wrong.

INT21
 
I think the idea that some cultures can't see blue, though a common trope, is fairly debunked. There's the example of the Namibian tribe who don't have different words for 'blue' and 'green', but, well, can see the difference. (The Sapir-whorf hypothesis–the idea that thought is determined by language–is largely discarded in linguistics but rears its ugly head in various other disciplines).

Other things: English speakers do see 'red' and 'pink' as different colours, whereas people from some cultures who don't have separate words won't perhaps make the same differentiation. In Russian, for example,
blue and light blue have separate common names and may be seen as different colours. In Chinese, pink is called 'light red' but as far as I can tell people do see it as a different colour. There are two different common words for green in Chinese, denoting slightly different colours (Also LOL, from wikipedia: '[...] green hats are associated with infidelity and used as an idiom for a cuckold. This has caused uneasiness for Chinese Catholic bishops, who in ecclesiastical heraldry would normally have a green hat above their arms. Chinese bishops have compromised by using a violet hat for their coat of arms. Sometimes this hat will have an indigo feather to further display their disdain for the color green.').

In Japanese, the word 'midori', meaning green, was introduced later on and both blue and green used to be covered by the word 'ao'. Nowadays 'ao' usually means blue, but there are a few peculiarities like the green traffic light, which is described as 'ao'.

Most languages develop more complex colour lexicons over time, starting with white, black, red, then blue. This is not to say that people can't see all the colours if they lack the words to describe them specifically.
 
On the subject of oranges. I have just come across a weird description in Agatha Christie's Dumb Witness in which the murder victim, who had liver problems is described as being "as yellow as an orange". Very odd! The book was published in 1937. Maybe oranges were a bit insipid back then?
 
Min Bannister said:
On the subject of oranges. I have just come across a weird description in Agatha Christie's Dumb Witness in which the murder victim, who had liver problems is described as being "as yellow as an orange". Very odd! The book was published in 1937. Maybe oranges were a bit insipid back then?
Click to expand...
Oranges and lemons have been selectively bred over many years. Maybe back then, they were more pale?
 
Another interesting (at least I thought so..) perception thing from that book. As fans will know, English people struggled a bit with Poirot's name and often came up with Hercules Parrot. However, though Hercule looks almost identical to Hercules when written down, it sounds nothing like it when spoken, ie when Poirot is actually introducing himself. You might come up with Erkle or somesuch but not Hercules. Come to think of it, I am not sure about the Parrot either because of the "t" which is firmly pronounced by the type of English person who frequents Agatha Christie books (posh) but not by a Belgian. And he is not giving out cards necessarily as he is often pretending to have certain occupations in order to get information.

Funny I have never noticed that before.
 
Min Bannister said:
On the subject of oranges. I have just come across a weird description in Agatha Christie's Dumb Witness in which the murder victim, who had liver problems is described as being "as yellow as an orange". Very odd! The book was published in 1937. Maybe oranges were a bit insipid back then?
Click to expand...

She wouldn't have used the description "as orange as an orange", though, would she?
 
"Pink's my favorite colour, so why doesn't it appear in a rainbow?".

Question posed by my Granddaughter.

Well, of course it's a colour... let's look this up on Google...

Bloody 'ell... It's not that straightforward at all..

Thoughts anyone?
 
I'm not sure what you're questioning ...

In terms of optics and color categorization ...

Pink does not appear in the rainbow because it's not a spectral color (a pure color at a single wavelength). Red is a spectral color.

Pink is (at a minimum) a combination of red and white. This addition of white makes pink a tint (in the formal sense) of the color red rather than a pure color in its own right.
 
I overheard an interesting colour comparator being stated yesterday on Radio4 "pink is the navy-blue of India". This is a fascinating statement that deserves further research (which I can't begin to pursue this early in the morning).

I will close for now by saying that pink (in the west) has become a 'loaded' colour (or tint/shade/hue). In other words, it is probably the most non-neutral colour in terms of baggage and attributed significance (your cited link has just appeared above...thanks!)

(Meantime, I, the undersigned, shall forfeit all rights, privileges, and licenses herein and herein contained, et cetera, et cetera... Fax mentis incendium gloria cultum, et cetera, et cetera... Memo bis punitor delicatum..... good night!)
 
Comfortably Numb said:
Thanks for that. My dilemma was coming across the argument that there are no colours at all and pink is as valid as red, green or blue..
Click to expand...

The assignment of labels to particular color ranges is arbitrary, and in the everyday sense of 'color' pink (or the set of pinkish hues) is a 'color'.

In formal usage, what we call a 'pink color' in colloquial terms is a tint (variant obtained by adding white) of a pure (spectral) color in the red range or set.
 
Comfortably Numb said:
This is the article which led to my question:
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/03/07/does-the-color-pink-exist-scientists-arent-sure/
Click to expand...

That article is playing on the distinction between the notions of color as an objective quality versus a subjective perception.

The sensation or perception of color is a product, and hence an artifact, of our sensory apparatus and perceptual processes. The pink we see is the pink we as 'receivers' can distinguish, and we can reliably refer to it among ourselves because the majority of us have very similar apparatus / processes.
 
Color definition is a cultural thing. Behold, for example, mizu.

Capture.PNG

Now to a Westerner, that's a light blue. But to a Japanese person, this isn't blue at all. It is its own color - mizu.

"The existence of these colors doesn't necessarily mean Japanese is more sensitive to color differences overall compared to other languages—it doesn’t have names for some colors we can identify in English, such as magenta or lime. "

I remember being introduced to "mauve" as a kid - it was fashionable in the 70s at some stage. Still looks purple to me, I have no idea how people tell the difference.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/94054/english-doesnt-have-word-color-japanese-does
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top