GPS directions, color schemes, and other linguistic universals

[Edward Dumanis]

I think that the answer on the color standards in Russia is quite simple.
They had different size sets of color pencils used in day care centers
and later on. There smallest of those  pencil sets had the colors
which were included in all other sets, and orange was just one of them
with no relation to апельсины. Those pencils were the reference
points.

Sincerely,

Edward Dumanis



On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 6:44 AM, anne marie devlin
<anne_mariedevlin at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Just a memory re: oranzhevyi and it's place in the Russian language.  there is a song I vaguely remember my daughter learnt in detskyi sad which has the lines oranzhevoe nebo, oranzhevyi verblyud.  It seems to portray some sort of exotic even pyschodelic world.  if you take it in context with the Beatles Lucy in the sky with diamonds and the reference to tangerine dreams and marmalade skies, there is maybe some connection  in both languages between things of a yellowy/reddish hue and the fantastic???
>
> Of course, here in Ireland, orange has completely different connotations
>
> AM
>
>> Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 11:12:21 +0100
>> From: wfr at SAS.AC.UK
>> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] GPS directions, color schemes, and other linguistic universals
>> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
>>
>> 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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