/lit/ - Literature

>>10688014
>the Greeks did not have a word for blue
what did they call it then

>>10688014
You would enjoy On Being Blue, by William Gass.

>>10688025
they didn't see it faggot

>>10688025
They considered it shades of other colors. Chinese is the same, blue and green were considered two shades of the same color until they made contact with English.

Look up articles about colors in The Odyssey. Some brainlets think there were algae in the Greek water that made it look different, because they can't wrap their brainlet heads around language like "wine dark sea" and "bronze sky"

>>10688014
uh bro they called it the wine-dark sea. they lived in an archipelago that reflected ocean and sky, which is blue.

post sources to back up your claim greeks did not understand blue

also pic related. a book that might be of interest, if you can perceive the colors in the image and make out any information.

>>10688025
Not all languages have the same number of "basic color terms" as we do.In natural languages they actually arise in a relatively fixed order, with a minimum of 2 (light vs dark). http://www.pnas.org/content/109/18/6819

>>10688062
jesus christ I didn't say they didn't understand blue Fucking retard

>>10688062
Read Plato and Aristotle, both of whom had theories about color.

Have you ever imagined what the world looked like before you knew anything about it?

>>10688084
>not posting sources
okay buddy

/thread

>>10688090
no. i have memories of being an preliterate infant. the world was perceived, sure. i recognized blue, but i didn't particularly dwell on it. emotions and other sensory inputs were stronger than fine visual distinction.

An interesting phenomenon. Someone mentioned China, but they didn't mention that brown was unnamed there until meeting the English too. They did not see brown as a color itself, but as a shade of orange or yellow (in some cases orange was also just a shade of yellow). That is why the word for brown in Chinese is literally "coffee color" (and orange is "orange[fruit] color").
The easiest representation of a brownless China is the common phrase "the yellow earth"

>>10688025
wine

>>10688025
>>10688038
Learn about colour throughout history and linguistic relativity. Basically: colours don't get unique names and are considered a shade of a broader colour (blue is always a shade of black, for example), until words for them are created, usually as these 'colours' become more common, especially as distinct objects themselves rather than a component of something. Like, you might consider a given colour to be an aspect of a particular animal, but if you have a readily-available dye for that colour, then the colour itself is the object. No longer an aspect, requiring a distinct word. Even then, it's not an imperative, many advanced cultures didn't go beyond 3 colours + lightness/darkness. The standard set of colours that you tend to find in most languages now, are only there due to Europeans, often the imposition of European notions onto others. Even when a language 'gets a colour', it may be that it only used/understood by a small part of society, such as painters/artisans. It's not that they saw things differently, just their way of expressing and thinking about those things was different. Also, often instead of colours one would use referential characteristics to describe the colour and texture of something, rather than a standalone colour. This is important because instead of a simple word, you get indirect, metaphorical, allegorical, and referential descriptions.

>>10688014
Read "Through the Language Glass".

>>10688798
>They did not see brown as a color itself, but as a shade of orange or yellow
Isn't that literally what it is though?

I read they described the sea as "wine dark" but someone probably said that ITT already.

>>10688109
Same here, I also remember struggling with separating shape from colour.

>>10689156
and the sky as silver

>mfw /lit/ reads all the same reddit posts

Color is irrelevant.

>>10689146
>Isn't that literally what it is though?

There are no "literal" identity of colors, you could argue any color is just a shade of another color

>>10689263
>our ability to discern the seperate identity of objects is irrelevant

Stop being a pseud

>>10689312
Is it normal that I can't see the thing ?

>>10689440
You’re colorblind, there’s a 74 among the dots. There’s a bunch of tests for it online, take one.

>>10689440
not trolling but you're probably actually colorblind

Matisse always annoys me. I always get the feeling he was a sexless elderly man his entire life, painting tame and boring erotic scenes while someone like Picasso actually fucked a shitload of girls and knew what he was painting about.

>>10689111
This. Guy Deutscher sparked my interest in linguistics.

>>10688025
'bronze' was also used

>>10688038
>They considered it shades of other colors. Chinese is the same, blue and green were considered two shades of the same color until they made contact with English.

But blue and green are obviously different colors. I can understand the Chinese thinking they aren't because they can't see well, but the Greeks? They must be brainlets.

>>10689665
>But blue and green are obviously different colors.

There's no objective thing as "different colors" in this way

>Non-Slavs thing Cyan is a shade of Blue

Smh

>>10688109
>sources

Here ya go pal: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2

>>10688032
are you stupid?

>>10688014
No actually I haven't, take your degenerate faggot art and leave

>>10688032

>>10688025
I remember reading how they described the blue sky as being the color of rust on copper.

>>10689505
>tfw i thought it was 24