tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Sep 25 13:56:38 1994
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Re: Hello, and a few questions
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>Date: Sun, 25 Sep 94 14:28:30 EDT
>Welcome to the Klingon Language List. I am the Beginner's
>Grammarian, and as such, I'm primarily responsible for
>responding to beginners.
I am Mr. Roarke, your host. (Sorry, charghwI'; I couldn't resist. You
don't know how much I appreciate your handling the beginners' posts)
>According to METEU, THE MIGHTY LLAMA:
>> In the KD there
>> are words for 'blue, be blue, green, yellow' - SuD, and 'red, be red, orange
>'
>> - Doq. How can you tell what color you're talking about?
>That's simple. You can't.
About right, but a little simplistic. The thing you have to bear in mind
is that many languages divide up the color-space differently than English.
The color of a clear daytime sky and the color of the field on the American
Flag are both "blue" to English-speakers, but one is "kachol" and one
"t'chelet" to an Israeli. An oft-quoted example is that "glas" means both
"blue" and "green" in Welsh. Many languages actually have only two
color-words: light and dark. You can explicate with things like "dark like
what the sky looks like in the evening" or "light like what buttercups look
like" and so on. It's not at all unusual for languages to conflate colors
that we in English think different, and vice-versa; so don't think of it as
being a "limitation" or "unnatural."
>> Joe Schelin