Re: [tied] Yellow as an PIE word

Your general point is well taken, that color discrimiination is
largely cultural and the ancient languages seem to us impoverished
in color terms, but I don't understand your point d). Blue is not
beyond the range of the receptors in my retina, and I doubt that is
was beyond that of the Greeks and Romans. Certainly they prized
lapis lazuli (Pliny's 'sapphirum' by his description must be lapis),
which is a pretty dull rock in black-and-white photos.
William Ewart Gladstone, no less, concluded that the Homeric
Greeks were color-blind. Do you think Tony Blair has an opinion on
the question?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:
> > Regardless which are the reasons which are brought to say there
was not colour name in PIE it sounds doubtfully.
> > It is simply seems to be very hard to say there was no name for
colours.
>
> Alas, it must be true. Colour words in Latin Greek and Sanskrit
are notorious!
> (a) There are surprisingly few of them, and most that do exist
are taken from objects, such "sky" or "mud".
> (b) The ones that are inherited are exactly in line with what we
see in other cultures: Cultures with two colour words have
black/white; with three they are black/white/red with four either
black/white/red/yellow or black/white/red/green - but in all of
these cultures the meaning of the colour word is extended beyond its
range in English. So it is in Latin,> Greek and Sanskrit.
(c) The range of the colour words in Latin Greek and Sanskrit is
so extreme and bizarre that some of them at least cannot have
referred only to the hue. For example, purple snow, green horse.
> (d) There is no definite proof that the Romans or Greeks could
perceive Blue as Blue. They probably could, but nothing in their
literature or painting proves it. (Blue is significant because it
is at the far end of the perceived spectrum, beyond the frequency of
the colour perceptors in the retina.)
>
> We also know that colour perception is cultural! Yes, our eyes
are the same, but the way we construct the world, and classify
things is not. And we learn from our culture how to label colours.
>
> Peter