At 09:26 AM 9/24/2004 +0200, you wrote: >I am abit late but if you think you have problems with colours...... >As a nonnative spaker I wrestled ( and still do ) with red. I made the >following schemae. Starting from white, yellow or blue, I added >more and more red Do you think there is any truth In this >scheme?Or would you place some colours on another place or add >even more ( I dont hope so). Hi, Ben. You are taking the same approach I did when I first started to try to seriously understand colors and color names. And as you have already discovered, it's surprisingly complicated. In the discussion which follows, I've relied on traditional subtractive color theory - the rules which deal with pigments. But keep in mind that for some applications the additive theory would be more appropriate. In short, your lists confuse two things: 1) what happens when a color is combined with white and 2) what happens when two or more different colors are combined. To understand "pink", for instance, you have to understand the difference. Redo your list. Group the colors first in terms of two primary colors (white is not a primary color). In other words, set up the groups red+blue, red+yellow, Yellow+blue. Then notice the "in-between" colors: between red and blue, purple; between red and yellow, orange; between yellow and blue, green. That gives you six colors which are widely recognized. Now vary those colors by adding more or less white. That gives you two sets of colors: primary colors made paler by the addition of white make up one group. The other group is made up of the secondary colors made paler by the addition of white. In a sensible world, all of these colors should retain the name of the primary or secondary color on which they are based. But that's not the way it works. Consider the term "pink": it's not simply the paler reds. It includes paler reds some of which include a blue/purple element, and some of which include a yellow/orange element. Presumably the number of potential combinations is unlimited even at this simple level. So far, we have considered only the primary and secondary colors and their paler derivatives. As you try to assign names to those colors, you will discover that already we are in deep water. The level of complexity really jumps when only three rather than two colors are involved, and that's just the beginning. With these things in mind, let's go back and look at your groups: >White+ Red: pink rose cyclamen fuchsia >carmine cherry In this group, you looked at the combinations resulting from the mixing of red and white. Remember, white is not a primary color. And see the warning about pink above. Rose (less so) and fuchsia (more so) have an element of blue, and so are not derived from the simple combination of red and white - you would have to add some blue to get these. We have discussed cherry (cerise) in the related posts; it is too imprecise to be used without careful definition. See the discussion of carmine below, with crimson. You will have to tell me what color cyclamen is. >Yellow + Red: orange salmon lobster-red tomato- >red crimson vermilion cranberry garnet >scarlet =ruby=cinnabar=magenta? current-red >poster-red burgundy wine-red This one starts out fine: red + yellow give the secondary color orange. Tomato red and scarlet fit in here well. The others are more complex than the simple mixing of yellow and red. Cranberry (ripe cranberries; earlier they are red-orange), garnet, ruby, burgundy, wine red all agree in being rich, dark colors - very complex colors, hardly simple combinations of primary or secondary colors. Crimson and carmine are alike in being derived, historically, from the same natural source, kermes. Both are blue rather than yellow reds, so-to-speak. But carmine came to be derived from cochineal, and of the two is the brighter. A similar situation exists with vermilion and cinnabar: historically, both are mercuric sulphide. But cinnabar typically refers to a duller color than vermilion. Here in eastern North America we have a bird called the painted bunting: it has big patches of vermilion and blue in its color and is an amazing sight. I don't know the term poster red (is it a British term?), and I have seen currents in photographs only (the photograph on the jelly jar!). As for lobsters, I think they vary a lot depending on their source and the recipe used. ; ) >Blue + Red: lavender lilac aster-violet mauve >maroon violet amethyst purple The only one which does not exactly fit here is maroon, a color term which does not have a precise meaning. It's usually a very dark red, but a red with purple and brown in it. Whatever it is, it is not simply a combination of red and blue. Ben, when you write "As a nonnative spaker I wrestled ( and still do ) with red" you needn't apologize. Native speakers of English do not agree about these things, either. Perhaps some of the responses to this post will demonstrate that. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@starpower.net You got off to a good start by listing colors which result from the combination of only two primary colors. Most of us seem to agree about these pretty much. But to my eyes, some of your suggestons involve a third primary color. First, let's look at your white + red list. White is not a primary color, so strictly speaking (to my way of thinking anyway) all of the colors which result from combining red and white are properly called red - darker or lighter, but still red. However, since most people think of pink and red as different colors, we have already hit a bump: common usage does not agree with me! Am I wrong that for most of us, "pink" is the generic term for such combinations? In fact, so strongly is pink established as a commonly recognized color that even people otherwise insensitive to color are apt to see the difference between blue pinks and yellow pinks. So, we started with red and white, recognized the importance of pink as a distinct color in common usage, and then noted the variations in pink as it varies to the blue (magenta falls here, so does rose; historically, fuchsia [fuchsine] and magenta are the same thing, aren't they?) or the yellow side of the color wheel (salmon falls here). So already we have lots of complications, and we are discussing only one primary color, red, dulled or brightened with white and a touch of the colors on either side of red on the color wheel. Crimson (etymologically from kermes, an insect which yields a purplish-red) is a full, strong red with a bit of blue in it. Think nineteenth century red Hybrid Perpetual roses, or red pre-Pernetiana garden roses in general. Carmine (also kermes etymologically, but eventually cochineal in fact, a brighter red) is harder to define, and in fact the book definitions have it going off into the blue direction and the yellow direction (scarlet). Most agree that carmine is lighter and brighter than crimson. Vermilion and cinnabar should, chemically, be the same thing, since they are both mercuric sulphide. But the terms are used differently: vermillion is the color seen in the Painted Bunting, an amazing color. If you've never seen a painted bunting, the color is to red as the color of the bluebird is to blue. Cinnabar is to my eyes duller - more like the redder corals (not to be confused with the color term coral, which is less red). But two of the others you mention, namely rose and fuchsia, have a bit of blue, fuchsia more so than rose. >White+ Red: pink rose cyclamen fuchsia >carmine cherry > >Yellow + Red: orange salmon lobster-red tomato- >red crimson vermilion cranberry garnet >scarlet =ruby=cinnabar=magenta? current-red >poster-red burgundy wine-red > >Blue + Red: lavender lilac aster-violet mauve >maroon violet amethyst purple >Ben J.M.Zonneveld >Institute of Biology,Leiden University, Clusius lab >Wassenaarse weg 64, 2333 AL Leiden, The Netherlands >Zonneveld@rulbim.Leidenuniv.NL >Fax: +31-71-5274999. min temp -10C (15F) >_______________________________________________ >pbs mailing list >pbs@lists.ibiblio.org >http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php >