Re: Punctiation and pronunciation in AmE and BrE

"James Silverton" <not.jim.silverton@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Chuck wrote on Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:45:54 +0000:
I'll explain my point again. If we were to describe any particular
colour by its wavelength rather than by its name, everyone would
know exactly what colour is meant. My point was that that doesn't
mean the 5290 Angstrom line colour, for example, appears to your
brain the same way it appears to mine. I don't know or care what
colour 5290 is, but how do I know my British racing green is your
British racing green? --

The sensation, even at a particular wavelength, may be different. I
have heard quite intense arguments as to whether a spectral line
should be called "red" or "orange" and I think it might apply to
other colors. I believe Scottish Gaelic uses the same word for blue
and green.

That's not a matter of sensation, but rather perception. (Although
the presence of people with various forms of color blindness implies
that there are likely differences in sensation as well.)

Berlin and Kay established in the '60s that speakers of different
languages had different numbers of "basic" colors[1] (from two to
eleven), that there is an order to which colors are added to a
language[2], and that even among languages at the same level, the
boundaries between colors are drawn differently and there will be
smaller differences in boundary between speakers of the same
language. Languages will also differ (but speakers of a language
largely agree) if shown a grid of color tiles and asked to point to
"the best example of red".

There have been some challenges and tweaks to the theory over the
years, but I believe it's still considered to be basically sound.

[1] Roughly those that aren't seen by speakers as "a kind of" some
other color, tend to be given early when speakers are asked to
list colors, and tend not to be names of things.

[2] If there are two colors, they will be roughly "light" and "dark".
The third color will be roughly "red". The fourth and fifth will
be "yellow"(ish) and "green"(ish), in either order. The sixth
will be "blue"(ish). The seventh will be "brown"(ish). The rest
apparently have no set order.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
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http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


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