WordNerding

[Temteno]

Thanks for Alkia reviving this thread - I want to throw some of my favorite Finnish words here:

-Yökyöpeli: a person who is awake late
-Kaamos: a time of the year when sun doesn't appear
-Vadelma: a rasberry
-Yö: a night. I know this is such a basic 'beautiful' word but it just has that ring to it!
-Kuulas: a transparent, bright or light
-Usva: a fog
-Haikea: a wistful
-Pöllö: an owl

[JoB]

A different kind of nerding about words, if I may (it seems that I cannot find an answer about this etymology online) ... why do all my main languages (DE+EN+FR) know a color "fire red" when, under normal circumstances, flames are yellow (thanks to the sodium content of most fuels) and only embers are red?

[Jitter]

Finnish has the same! Could it be related to the embers, which were preserved in the fireplace and the new fire was lit by fanning them? So that the embers were the “heart” of the fire? This is just speculation though.

Another thing that comes to mind is colors of sunset - the sky can be described as being aflame with a sunset, which also may be red. Although the red of sunset is more on the pink side, rather than “fire red”.

[catbirds]

I think this particular phenomenon owes its existence to the order by which people found the names for colours. The first colours that got named were red, black, and white, hence why you'd find, for instance, a bunch of birds described as "red" when they aren't particularly red, and why old Greek stories like the Odyssey described the sea as "wine-dark". The word to describe the exact colour of, say, a red grouse probably wasn't around at the time (it's brown), and the word to describe the exact colour of the sea probably wasn't around or at least not universal either (blue??? Green???).

So the idea of fire as a red thing was probably something left over from very very long ago, considering fire was also from pretty long ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Basic_color_terms here's a link to a summary of it I don't know how well it holds up, but it's the only theory I've heard of about this sort of thing.

[Songbird]

I think it has to do with the nature of the fires when words were first coined. Fire was rarely the tame, shy and smokeless high-temperature thing as we know in the past. It's not like that in the nature.



Plus, bright yellow was reserved for the Sun.

[moredhel]

A painters explanation would be that things with an intensive red where rare before todays chemistry. There where not much things to compare something red with. So at least in german we have feuerrot (fire red) for intensive bright red and blutrot (blood red) for the dark ones. Non man made things of an intesive red color are cherrys, realgar and vermillion. Than I run out of ideas.

If your fire is burning with realtively low temperature or releases a lot of unburnt carbon it can burn quite red.

[Annuil]

Wow, this is very interesting. In Russian word “red” also used to be the same word for “beautiful”. Now it has changed a little, so the word “red” is “красный” (krasniy) and the word “beautiful/pretty/handsome” is “красивый” (krasiviy), so the root is the same and the meaning is close. Apparently Russians considered red beautiful  :'D
There are many versions of red too, but as you said, moredhel, they are mainly compared to things that existed for a long time, such as wine-red, firy-red, blood-red. However there are a few shades of red the names for which come from names of berries.
There is “брусничный” (brusnichniy) - “the color of lingonberry
“Малиновый” (malinoviy) - basically “the color of raspberry”, reddish-pink.
“Клубничный” (klubnichniy) - “the color of strawberry”.
Russian has tons and tons of synonyms for words (that is why I looove writing in Russian), so that list goes on. But it still proves the point that the names of the red colors refer to natural things, not anything man-made.

[JoB]

... weekend. Reply now or forever hold your PhD theses.

I think this particular phenomenon owes its existence to the order by which people found the names for colours. The first colours that got named were red, black, and white, hence why you'd find, for instance, a bunch of birds described as "red" when they aren't particularly red, and why old Greek stories like the Odyssey described the sea as "wine-dark". The word to describe the exact colour of, say, a red grouse probably wasn't around at the time (it's brown), and the word to describe the exact colour of the sea probably wasn't around or at least not universal either (blue??? Green???).

So the idea of fire as a red thing was probably something left over from very very long ago, considering fire was also from pretty long ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term#Basic_color_terms here's a link to a summary of it I don't know how well it holds up, but it's the only theory I've heard of about this sort of thing.

Hmmmm. First off, I'm a tad wary of this theory, as far as its claim to reflect basic neurological or physiological constraints is concerned. The range of hues that our eyes and visual cortex are best suited to differentiate between are greens, presumably to better filter orientation "land"marks out of foliage, so why would red be the first actual color to get a name if the connection were that straightforward? (Note that I am giving the linguists enough credit to not suspect a case of "oh, languages have a ton of 'yummyberry bush in spring (colored)' terms before they get to 'red', the researchers just failed to recognize these as color terms because they don't exist to that specifity in their language".)

But back to "fire red", the Berlin-Kay theory specifically denies its applicability there because "fire red" is not a basic color term, and thus should only have evolved well after "yellow" ... 

I think it has to do with the nature of the fires when words were first coined. Fire was rarely the tame, shy and smokeless high-temperature thing as we know in the past. It's not like that in the nature.

I wonder how much of that "fire" red is actually radiation from embers diffused by the smoke ... but yes, point taken.

Plus, bright yellow was reserved for the Sun.

At least English has a "fire yellow" by now. (German apparently has not, if you ignore a couple occurences where some marketing dpt. seems to have had a trendygasm.)

By the way, the explanation I was sorta expecting would have been that "fire red" came into existence as a shortening of "the red color of a fire engine". Yellow fire engines exist in English-speaking countries, but never did (apart from imports by transnational operators) in Germany, as far as I can tell. Matter of fact, to this day, RAL 3000 "Feuerrot" is one of the colors specifically mentioned in our regulations for fire engines. (It is poorly suited as the backing color of retroreflective surfaces, though, which IIUC helped the "liberalization" along.)

Wow, this is very interesting. In Russian word “red” also used to be the same word for “beautiful”.

... heh, that reminds me. At least in the German version, the parents of Snow White wished for (and got) a girl "so weiß wie Schnee, so rot wie Blut und so schwarz wie Ebenholz" (as white as snow, as red as blood and as black as ebony, supposedly referring to complexion, lips, and hair, in that order, if you please ). I guess Berlin-Kay is something straight out of fairy tales ...

[lumilaulu]

By the way, the explanation I was sorta expecting would have been that "fire red" came into existence as a shortening of "the red color of a fire engine".

I don't know about English, but in Dutch the word vuurrood predates fire engines by at least several centuries.

Hmmmm. First off, I'm a tad wary of this theory, as far as its claim to reflect basic neurological or physiological constraints is concerned. The range of hues that our eyes and visual cortex are best suited to differentiate between are greens, presumably to better filter orientation "land"marks out of foliage, so why would red be the first actual color to get a name if the connection were that straightforward? (Note that I am giving the linguists enough credit to not suspect a case of "oh, languages have a ton of 'yummyberry bush in spring (colored)' terms before they get to 'red', the researchers just failed to recognize these as color terms because they don't exist to that specifity in their language".)

It seems to me that, if you're living in an environment that is overwhelmingly green, it'd be more useful to be able to point out red (meaning: ripe) berries than a green bush.

Linguists researching colour terminology are very aware different languages may very different terms for colours and may make very different distinctions between them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_language: a pretty interesting read about colour distinctions in various languages.

I remember seeing a BBC documentary about colours years ago, and they showed an experiment testing blue-green distinction among members of an African tribe. The experiment involved, among other tasks, asking the participants to choose the "odd one out" among a various shades of blue and/or green. For any combination of shades the "odd one out" that was chosen was very consistent within the tribe, and very different from the "odd one out" that a group of native English speakers in the UK chose (which was, again, very consistent within that group, and also what I, as a fellow native West Germanic speaker, chose).

Colours & languages is a fascinating subject.

[moredhel]

If the word fire red is really old it may have been a first try to name orange. But I have no idea how old this word is. I know it is two words, but in other laguages like german and dutch it is one word.

[lumilaulu]

I found a book from 1777 which lists a number of colours flowers can have, and it names vuurrood as well as rood and oranje. It then goes on to say there are more colours than names for colours, and gives some ad-hoc compounds that could be used for some of these.

[catbirds]

The hypothesis my previous post linked to has been questioned and revised a few times tbh, so I'd take it with a grain of salt regardless, but I felt it might have to do with how colours are grouped. I think that hypothesis might have been used against people of different cultures at some point, so it's good to question these sorts of things, but I thought maybe fire had almost always been grouped as red because of that. Hopefully someday someone'll come up with a more complete idea of colours and linguistics!

I think it has to do with the nature of the fires when words were first coined. Fire was rarely the tame, shy and smokeless high-temperature thing as we know in the past. It's not like that in the nature.

Could be, though I don't know if everyone lived in a place with fuel like in the image. A fire in the desert or a small firepit in a dim cave would've been different, but I'm not a linguist so I'm not sure about the relationship between early human migrations and language development.

I found a book from 1777 which lists a number of colours flowers can have, and it names vuurrood as well as rood and oranje. It then goes on to say there are more colours than names for colours, and gives some ad-hoc compounds that could be used for some of these.

At a certain point, though, it gets kinda hard to just name colours after things, doesn't it? Though it's also helpful to just associate colours with things, it gets difficult because then you'll have to rely on personal experience to know what a word is describing

[JoB]

It seems to me that, if you're living in an environment that is overwhelmingly green, it'd be more useful to be able to point out red (meaning: ripe) berries than a green bush.

Two and a half point:

0. It seems that we agree that terms for colors are more likely to have evolved to fill a need in communication, as opposed to our biological senses, which have evolved along the needs of our own perception. That's an important difference: The spider's red markings may have been key in making me jump back, but when I try to warn you of the danger, "don't go near the tree with the blue-green leaves" is the more important color detail to get across.

1. In your particular scenario, the necessity to point out red berries arises from the fact that the other guy does not yet know about them and where they are; again, "do go near blue-green tree, yummy!" is a better message to send than "Mumblefoo berries, ripe for three of four days, judging by their color! They're delicious!"

2. You are suggesting that the term/concept "red" arose specifically in the context of (ripe) fruit. We use red color in traffic lights and signs¹ because our limbic system, a really old part of our brains, associates "danger/stop" with it, not "good to eat". Red as in venomous animals or freshly shed blood, not fruit.

¹ Well, in the nations that signed up to the Vienna Convention, at least. MUTCD is more black-on-yellow and SPCE-SAVE-SPELT text oriented.

I remember seeing a BBC documentary about colours years ago, and they showed an experiment testing blue-green distinction among members of an African tribe. The experiment involved, among other tasks, asking the participants to choose the "odd one out" among a various shades of blue and/or green. For any combination of shades the "odd one out" that was chosen was very consistent within the tribe, and very different from the "odd one out" that a group of native English speakers in the UK chose (which was, again, very consistent within that group, and also what I, as a fellow native West Germanic speaker, chose).

Colours & languages is a fascinating subject.

No contest there. FWIW, I'm wondering whether the linguists thought of holding up such differences to the latitude of the places where the terminology in question originates. Apart from emissive colors (like fire ), the question of "what does (an object of) color X normally look like" crucially depends on what spectral composition, and possibly intensity as well, "normal" (day)light in your place has, after all.

If the word fire red is really old it may have been a first try to name orange. But I have no idea how old this word is. I know it is two words, but in other laguages like german and dutch it is one word.

... in the context of Berlin-Kay(-inspired theories), it is still not a basic color term (BCT); one word, yes, but nonetheless a compound one.

[lumilaulu]

The blue-green tree, as opposed to what, the purple tree? Most trees, bushes, grasses, plants, are blue-green. If you want to point out a particular tree, you would probably be better off with other descriptors than a basic colour term it shares with most other trees.

Whether poisonous berries or ripe berries, in both cases it's useful to be able to point them out. "Look, that red over there, those are good berries, eat them!", or "Look, that red over there, those are bad berries, don't eat them!"

FWIW, I'm wondering whether the linguists thought of holding up such differences to the latitude of the places where the terminology in question originates. Apart from emissive colors (like fire ), the question of "what does (an object of) color X normally look like" crucially depends on what spectral composition, and possibly intensity as well, "normal" (day)light in your place has, after all.

They also talked about comparing the colour vision of white people living in a temperate climate vs white people living in the tropics (white people for both groups to exclude as much as possible differences in colour vision caused by differences in genetic make-up). I don't remember anything else they said about this, though.

[JoB]

The blue-green tree, as opposed to what, the purple tree? Most trees, bushes, grasses, plants, are blue-green. If you want to point out a particular tree, you would probably be better off with other descriptors than a basic colour term it shares with most other trees.

As I said, if(!) you want your train of thoughts on the matter to make a stop in the "physiological basics of color perception" station, you'll have to account for the fact that human eyes are better suited to tell hues of green apart than those of other colors, presumably for the exact reason to be able to extract waymarks from oodles of green foliage. Which would fit very well with the abovementioned fact that humans elsewhere (different plants) use frequency-shifted notions of "blue" and "green", of all basic colors.

Whether poisonous berries or ripe berries, in both cases it's useful to be able to point them out. "Look, that red over there, those are good berries, eat them!", or "Look, that red over there, those are bad berries, don't eat them!"

If myself and the recipient of the information are standing in front of the object in question, the red color will happily point itself out. (As will the shape of leaves, their arrangement (rotational angle) on the stem, size of thorns, smell, ...) Words are necessary to stand in for the object in its absence.

Which brings me to another idea: At what point in the evolution of a language do those "basic" color terms actually appear? I can easily imagine a nascent language making do for a long while with just the names of the objects thus colored, rather than creating terms for an abstraction of its color. When everybody knows what a "death berry" is, you don't need to continue "I shall call its color 'red'".

Matter of fact, to some extent, we do that to this day. We immediately know that the poet praising "cherry lips" and "flaxen hair" is talking about the concept of colors, rather than having dessert wearing a straw wig (involving the actual materials).