tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 11 13:19:07 1999
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RE: The Colour Purple
: The important thing to keep in mind here is that Klingon has two basic words
: for colors: <Doq> and <SuD>. English has six (I think), so we try to map our
: notions onto Klingon, inventing complicated expressions for simple things.
: To a Klingon, a yellow hat, a blue bowl, and a green tree are *all* <SuD>.
: If there is a need to be descriptive, you can certainly go wild, but in
: normal everyday speech, things are usually just <Doq> or <SuD>.
:
: pagh
In "normal everyday speech" black {qIj} and white {chIS} aren't colors?
<g> (Yes, I know that technically black is the absence of color, whereas
white is all colors in the spectrum viewed simultaneously.)
It's interesting how many people have problems with the different color
mapping systems. It's not that that Klingons can't distinguish between
blue/green, or red/yellow/orange - as far as we know (purple and violet
aside) - but that they consider them as essentially shades of the same
color. Just where do you draw the lines between one color and the next?
Is "grey" a shade of black or white? At what point for English speakers
does "green" turn into "blue", or "red" into "orange"? Is it exactly the
same place as in French? Or Russian? Arabic? Yoruba? Navaho?
Vietnamese? For that matter, what about Britains, Americans, Canadians,
Australians, Indians, Carribeans, and all other native speakers of English?
IIRC, ancient Egyptian also only had the same four basic color terms as
Klingon, yet that didn't hamper artistic or written creativity. Those
interested might want to research the vast Egyptological literature on
color and pigmentation conventions and terminology in Egyptian art.
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons