=?UTF-8?Q?=D1=81=D0=B8=D0=BD=D0=B8=D0=B9_?=and purple rainbows

[Stephanie Briggs]

Dear SEELANGers,

I'm reminded of a great line from the play *Angels in America* by Tony
Kushner. (Anyone who has seen the movie - what did you think of it? I adore
it, and would kill to see it on stage someday.)

*Belize:* Oooh, look  at that heavy sky up there.
*
*
*Louis: **(dejectedly)* Purple.
*
*
*Belize:* Purple??? Boy what kind of a homosexual are you? That's not
purple, Mary. That colour up there... *(grandly) *is MAUVE.

~Stephanie Briggs

On 11 March 2012 22:16, Francoise Rosset <frosset at wheatonma.edu> wrote:

> A little harmless spring-break "research" here ...
>
> Wikipedia:
> "the most commonly cited and remembered sequence, in English, is
> Newton's sevenfold red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and
> violet."
>
> Indigo, then, corresponds to синий.
> But we don't use "indigo" to the extent they use синий in Russian.
>
> "Purple" as a word must be related to пурпур– and to the French
> "pourpre," now translated as "crimson" because "purple" covers too
> many other associations besides royal robes. So it makes sense that
> Russians associate "purple" with reddish-purple.
>
> My own American "purple" is at the bluish-er end. Fashion jargon would
> tend to back me up, as the more reddish purples have a slew of other
> color-names, such as plum, orchid, eggplant, aubergine.
>
> BUT purple seems quite ... versatile.
> The wikipedia entry shows a rather reddish color swatch, but says,
> "Purple is a very rare color in nature, though the lavender flower is
> an example of purple nature."
> The lavender flower, as it happens, is pale grayish-blue purple, NO
> relation to the color swatch they show.
>
> http://simple.wikipedia.org/**wiki/Purple<http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple>
> Look through the examples they give at the bottom, your bridesmaids'
> dresses may be in it.
> Some of those colors to me are out-and-out reds, while others would
> certainly be синий to Russians.
>
> Or ... look at "Blue"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Blue <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue> > "shades of blue"
>
> It's a lot of fun to disagree with most of the nomenclature,
> plus our computers show colors differently anyway
> and many of those are not stable colors.
> -FR
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 17:07:31 -0400
>  Melissa Smith <mtsmith02 at YSU.EDU> wrote:
>
>> It has something to do with the way they divide the colors of the
>> rainbow. I once has an argument about bridesmaids' dresses in an outdoor
>> wedding with a Russian friend about identification in English as "purple,"
>> which she identified as "sinij"  For her, "Purple" was closer to "Crimson,"
>> or robes of royals.
>>
>> I don't know how we remember the colors of the rainbow, but I believe we
>> identify the end of the spectrum as "violet."
>>
>> I believe Russians know a phrase: Kazhdyi Oxotnik ZHelaet Znat- Gde ... I
>> forget the rest. Melissa Smith
>>
>> Melissa T. Smith, Professor
>> Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures  Youngstown State
>> University
>> Youngstown, OH 44555
>> Tel: (330)941-3461
>>
>>
>
> Francoise Rosset, Associate Professor
> Chair, Russian and Russian Studies
> Wheaton College
> Norton, Massachusetts 02766
> Office: (508) 285-3696
> FAX:   (508) 286-3640
>
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