GPS directions, color schemes, and other linguistic universals

[Josh Wilson]

In my (unscientific) experience, "oranzhevyi" is a fairly commonly used
word. 

That said, Russian conceptions of colors are quite different from American.
I have encountered several cases in my eight years in Moscow, and with
several Russians, where something was, for instance, pointed out to me as
blue that was quite strikingly purple. That which is orange for me is
sometimes brown from them. It seems that the lines in Russia between white,
beige, and brown are also not where I would put them. 

Interesting, and would probably make for a very interesting study at some
point in time... 

Josh Wilson
Assistant Director
The School of Russian and Asian Studies
Editor in Chief
Vestnik, The Journal of Russian and Asian Studies
SRAS.org 
jwilson at sras.org


-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list
[mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of William Ryan
Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 2:12 PM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] GPS directions, color schemes, and other linguistic
universals

  Yes, an interesting article. It begins "Before I knew that school 
buses were yellow, I experienced them as tangerine." and mentions 
sinii/goluboi and Russian colour awareness.

This prompted me to some "Wort und Sache" reflections. As a child in a 
largish working-class family in WW2 I did not see an orange until well 
after the war, and tangerines, satsumas etc re-emerged into general use 
several years later, and then only as rather exotic Christmas treats. So 
I don't know how I learned to identify orange as a colour. Presumably by 
instruction but without any specific point of reference. And I still 
would not normally employ tangerine as a first-choice colour term, and 
think of it as a word more likely to be seen in a fashion magazine or 
list of paint shades. My memory of American school buses is that they 
are indeed yellow.

In the Russian context, as a student in Leningrad in the early sixties I 
never saw an orange or any other citrus fruit. I do in fact wonder if 
the word "oranzhevyi" is as common in Russian as "orange" (as a colour 
word) is in English. The etymological dictionaries suggest that 
"oranzhevyi" was a borrowing from French in the 1860s, while in English 
"orange" as a colour has been in use at least since the 16th century. In 
Russian the colour word does not have the mnemonic benefit of a 
corresponding fruit referent as the English does. And as far as I know 
"apel'sinovyi" is not commonly used as a colour word. So what did 
Russian use before they had "oranzhevyi" and is "oranzhevyi" a 
first-choice word now? A quick unscientific search on Google and Yandex 
suggests that "a yellow orange" is not a normal word combination in 
English while "zheltyi apel'sin" is quite possible in Russian. I imagine 
that "an orange orange" would be even less likely in English, since it 
is a jingle, while "oranzhevyi apel'sin" would be quite possible in Russian.

Will Ryan

On 07/09/2010 22:10, Paul B. Gallagher wrote:
> <http://www.thenation.com/article/154551/bluer-rather-pinker>
>
> Interesting musings by Ange Mlinko, with references to some recent 
> publications.
>

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