tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 17 22:55:45 1994
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Re: tam poHvo'
- From: [email protected] (Marnen Laibow-Koser )
- Subject: Re: tam poHvo'
- Date: Wed, 18 May 94 10:48:39 EDT
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "Peter Garza" at May 10, 94 9:11 pm
jatlhta'neS Peter Garza:
[...]
: Can Klingon's see color as well as humans? I know that some languages do
: not distinguish between blue and green, for example old Japanese, so not
: having the words to describe the full spectrum (according to English) would
: not be so strange. However, to have only two words for distinguishing
: color (red/orange and blue/green/yellow) does strike me as a bit odd.
: Perhaps, with a better sense of smell (do they have that?), there was no
: evolutionary need to develop color recognition beyond its current state.
: Also, seeing the lack of color aboard ships and in the Great Hall, maybe
: that's not just an aesthetic choice, but a biological one as well. Maybe
: Klingon's eyes are more attuned to greys and detail than humans'. Well?
: Commentary?
This is a topic that keeps popping up on the list from time to time, so I
apologize to any longtime subscribers who may remember me saying this some time
ago. Meanwhile, for those who missed it the first time around, here goes: Check
out _Basic Color Terms_, by Berlin & Kay (first names keep slipping my mind) --
it's a fascinating, relatively nontechnical book. Their thesis is that, with
few exceptions, the color terms in natural Terran languages (bear in mind that
we don't know if Okrand was trying to duplicate this) follow this progression:
Stage I: black (all dark colors), white (all light colors).
Stage II: black, white, red.
Stage IIIa: black, white, red, green.
Stage IIIb: black, white, red, yellow.
Stage IV: black, white, red, green, yellow.
Stage V: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue.
Stage VI: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown.
Stage VII: Stage VI plus any or all of {gray, orange, pink, purple}.
Klingon, then, would be stage III (since we don't know the whether the focus of
>SuD< is yellow or green, it's hard to say whether it's IIIa or IIIb).
Hope this answers your questions.
:
: Peter Garza
: [email protected]
:
:
Qapla',
--
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