Tuesday, February 19, 2008

it has no color in itself, but it can make you see rainbows

Russian does not have a single word referring to the whole range of colors denoted by the English term "blue." Instead, it traditionally treats light blue (голубой, goluboy) as a separate color independent from plain or dark blue (синий, siniy), with all 7 "basic" colors of the spectrum (red - orange - yellow - green - (ru:голубой / goluboy / light blue, not equal cyan) - (ru:синий / siniy / dark blue) - violet) while in English the light blues like azure and cyan are considered mere shades of "blue" and not different colors. To better understand this, consider that English makes a similar distinction between "red" and light red (pink, which is considered a different color and not merely a kind of red), but such a distinction is unknown in several other languages; for example, both "red" (红 / 紅, hóng) and "pink" (粉红, fěn hóng, lit. "powder red") have traditionally been considered varieties of a single color in Chinese.

Similarly English descriptions of rainbows have often distinguished between blue or turquoise and indigo, the latter of which is often described as dark blue or ultramarine .

[Read more about color distinctions in different languages...]

title: magnetic fields lyrics


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey i saw that bubble typeface thing on ffffound i think

Anonymous said...

oh also we talked about this A LOT in linguistics

Unknown said...

yes! it's from ffffound ^_^

also thanks for the link!

Anonymous said...

do you have a link to the original ffffound page? i can't find it, i've clicked on all the typography pictures i could and looked in their "you might like" lists and it hasn't turned up. you know how i like context :,C

Anonymous said...
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