French vs. "red" and "orange" (off-topic)

[Jonathan Lighter]

Just because people can distinguish between red and orange, or a one-wheeled and a two-wheeled barrow, when they have to doesn't mean that they have distinct words ready to hand. Before the appearance of "orange" as a color name in English, they had to make do with "tawny" (not as precise) or "red" or "yellow" (not very precise either).

"Red like a rose," one assumes (always dangerous), could be distinguished from "red like the sun," "red like gold,"  "yellow like that flower," etc.

JL

Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: French vs. "red" and "orange" (off-topic)
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About 35 years ago, I read, in a book on color terms in language,
something to the effect that French color words do not distinguish
"red" from "orange." Several years later, I met a woman who was a
native speaker of Parisian French. When I asked her about the lack of
distinction between "red" and "orange" in French, her reply was that of
course French can distinguish between "red" and "orange." Pourquoi pas?
As I was turning away, disappointed in my expectations, she continued,
"A funny thing, though. My father is an artist and you'd expect that he
would know better. But he thinks that red and orange are the same
color!"

-Wilson Gray

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