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Color Thesaurus

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Lex Black said:
Yup. The word is "ao" and is used to describe both shades. You can read more on the subject (and other cool stuff related to the topic) here: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-facts-about-colors-that-will-change-how-you-see-world/
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Wow. Thus proving once and for all that Japanese people are wacky. Also Cracked is the best thing ever.

In my books, faeries can see wavelengths of radiation including including infrared and magic. You know how hard it is to describe colors beyond human comprehension?!
 
Whenever I see the colour grey or hear someone refer to it, I think of a part-lyric by Ian Dury. It's from his best-known hit Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll where he observes in one verse that 'grey is such a pity'.

Every bit of clothing ought to make you pretty
You can cut the clothing, grey is such a pity
I should wear the clothing of Mr. Walter Mitty
See my tailor, he's called Simon, I know it's going to fit


 
Lex Black said:
It takes practice, no doubt. I had a similar problem working in-depth with sensitive psychic characters. I had to actually introduce their own new vocabulary for what they experienced. It's always driven me crazy when such characters just "feel" something (think of how many times in the Star Wars films Force users just "feel" something). I came up with a new verb for that unknown sense, as well as a term for what was being "felt", and went from there. I never really found out if it worked or not.

Perhaps something like that would work for you?

"What's it like to see magic? Does it have a color?"
"Well, it does, but it's...it's kind of like...look, let's just call it our word for it, ______, OK?"
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I hadn't thought of that. I had a faerie describe being able to see easily in only starlight as if it were sunlight, and even in complete dark by the heat emanation from a dead torch, as long as the cinders remain hot. And as to being able to see magical emanation, the faeries describes it as "imagine if you had to describe a sunny, clear sky to someone that could not see the color blue without using the word blue," and the human was kind of like "unfathomable. Got it." It comes in handy a few times that a faerie can emanate magic from their own body for short periods of time before exhaustion, turning their own body into a light source by which to see in utter darkness and the lack of any heat source.


I'm toying around with the idea that because faeries are beings composed of magic and not solid flesh — more similar to djinn (a smokeless fire invisible to humans?) — they can see the full spectrum of electromagnetic radiation because they're more absorbing it into themselves, and our mortal minds only interpret them as seeing with eyes, more than using photoreceptors the way humans do. Because the story is set in the 12th century, I don't have to worry about the "color" that a wifi signal looks to a faerie, or that of a radio broadcast tower or an x-ray machine.

That's not to say my conception of faeries could see through walls, but if a faerie were watching someone go through an airport security x-ray, they could see the x-ray-colored light shine from the projector, and could see it illuminate the passenger's body and see their bones shaded within them. How effing cool would that be?!
 
Paul Whybrow said:
Whenever I see the colour grey or hear someone refer to it, I think of a part-lyric by Ian Dury. It's from his best-known hit Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll where he observes in one verse that 'grey is such a pity'.

Every bit of clothing ought to make you pretty
You can cut the clothing, grey is such a pity
I should wear the clothing of Mr. Walter Mitty
See my tailor, he's called Simon, I know it's going to fit
Click to expand...


He was a wordsmith par excelence..my favourite is.

'My name is tricky dicky and I come from Bilaricky and I'm feeling rather fine'.
 
Marc Joan said:
Someone told me that the Japanese have no word for green, as they regard it as a shade of blue. Or maybe it's the other way round. Wonder what they'd think of all this.
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Ah, it's similar in Chinese as we have a word "taing" which means green/blue. I used this word for both green and blue as a child and always thought it was a bit odd with potential to be confusing. This came to light when I was 10, in a shop with my mother asking her for the blue jumper from a pile of different coloured jumpers: I want the "taing" (meaning blue) jumper not the "taing" (meaning green) jumper.
She gave me the sharp, scary look only an impatient Chinese woman can give. Taking a deep breath, I asked her what colour was the sky and what colour were the leaves on the tree.
"Taing!" she snapped, then got my point. Then she said "lam" for blue and "loc" for green which I had never heard of until that point.

@Jason Byrne Japanese and Chinese both wacky. LOL
 
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I have an odd little book. a Japanese traveller toured in the Yorkshire Dales. He was an artist and the way he painted the Dales was most extraordinary, and hilarious. He Japanned them, good and proper, by 'eck. Must try and scan some of the pictures in, show you what I mean.
 
Crayola have brought out a new range of medical colours:

12733532_988290527932325_2958869290253105652_n.jpg
 
Sea-shore said:
Oh, please do! :)
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He Chinesed them good and proper. This is the book, link below, and his own illustrations of High Force in Teesdale, (my parents live very near there) and rabbits in Wharfedale.

Chiang Yee wrote this book while staying in a small flat in London which was bombed, the day before the Burma railway re-opened. He liked rabbits and was shocked that we ate them sometimes. He was himself born in a Rabbit Year. He made this trip to Yorkshire in 1940 and said anyone who did not believe in civilisation, and was ready to fight for it, support it and serve it, might just as well die right away. He could not fight, but he could write about what he saw here, and draw it, and serve European civilisation in that way, and his own at the same time. It's such a lovely book, and with many stories from China, too. But he didn't get any Yorkshire pudding while he was here, though he got it in a restaurant in Shanghai before he came; thinking to do his research :)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Silent-Traveller-Yorkshire-Dales/dp/B000TNEUHM


Silent Traveller High Force Teesdale.jpg Rabbits in Wharfedale Silent Traveller.jpg
 
Katie-Ellen Hazeldine said:
He Chinesed them good and proper. This is the book, link below, and his own illustrations of High Force in Teesdale, (my parents live very near there) and rabbits in Wharfedale.

View attachment 1033 View attachment 1035
Click to expand...

Lovely! My dad also does some interesting artwork but with more casual techniques - he draws park landscapes in biro. :DI'll put up a photo of one when I have some time.
 
Chase Gamwell said:
Quick...someone go write a book about a robot falling in love with a human, told from the robots POV...
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I did a GURPS game where I played the first true AI to be brought online, but I accidentally ended humanity in a nuclear holocaust.
That's kind of the same thing...
 
Sea-shore said:
Ah, it's similar in Chinese as we have a word "taing" which means green/blue. I used this word for both green and blue as a child and always thought it was a bit odd with potential to be confusing. This came to light when I was 10, in a shop with my mother asking her for the blue jumper from a pile of different coloured jumpers: I want the "taing" (meaning blue) jumper not the "taing" (meaning green) jumper.
She gave me the sharp, scary look only an impatient Chinese woman can give. Taking a deep breath, I asked her what colour was the sky and what colour were the leaves on the tree.
"Taing!" she snapped, then got my point. Then she said "lam" for blue and "loc" for green which I had never heard of until that point.

@Jason Byrne Japanese and Chinese both wacky. LOL
Click to expand...
Right?! There's a lot of languages where blue and green are considered the same thing. Or, in the case of a lot of African naming conventions, blue/green will be synonymous with violet, and yellow/green will be synonymous with yellow.
 
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