tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Mar 14 09:35:22 1999
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Re: The Colour Purple
ja' Voragh:
>...The ocean - a single body of water (at least on Earth) - can
>vary in shade depending on location, time of year, time of day, the
>weather, etc. But it's always {SuD}.
As soon as you say "always", you're setting yourself up for trouble.
There are "red tides" and even the "Red Sea" itself to consider. :-)
Some beaches have *brown* ocean, and the Arctic Ocean is often rather
white, especially around the North Pole.
Maybe the Klingon concept of {bIQ'a'} does include {SuD} as a nearly
inviolate attribute, though. In Hebrew, there are two colors that
both map to the English "blue", but only one of them is ever used to
describe the sky. If the sky actually *did* look t'chelet, would it
still be called kachol by a native speaker of Hebrew? I don't know
how the idea would be treated. I can imagine someone trying to say
the sky is the specific blue color indicated by the "non-sky-blue"
word, and getting strange looks from people.
There's sort of a similar concept in Klingon idiom, where the phrase
{cha'maH cha' joQDu'} is avoided when it's literally correct, to keep
from triggering the idiomatic idea of something being out of kilter.
-- ghunchu'wI'