Mastodawn

#wind #books #NaturalHistory #LyallWatson #nature

Stan Carey Aug 2, 2023

Speaking of wind, a book recommendation:

Heaven's Breath: A Natural History of the Wind by Lyall Watson is a wonderfully wide-ranging account of the wind as a natural and cultural phenomenon. I have an old Coronet paperback, but there's an attractive-looking new edition available from @NYRB_Imprints

Jeffrey Fisher Jul 31, 2023

@stancarey I want the little star to be a heart.

PJ "Vote Green" Coffey Jul 31, 2023

@stancarey

I apologise that my Gaeilge isn't very good but what is Pale in this context?

@Homebrewandhacking I wondered the same. Maybe "white" and "pale" are an attempt to distinguish between "bán" and "geal" in translation

PJ "Vote Green" Coffey Aug 1, 2023

@stancarey

Huh... bright as a colour rather than a property of a colour.

I'll have to think on that. It springs from a different world view.

28 dropped charges Aug 1, 2023

@Homebrewandhacking @stancarey some studies show that up to 25% of people currently in high school in Sweden comfortably identify and are out as some form of lgbtq

Meaning that all of the struggle, all the activism, every time I’ve been harrassed in the streets and argued about my existence? It’s working

PJ "Vote Green" Coffey Aug 2, 2023

@Zackstarkid @stancarey

That's really awesome! 😀

I'm not sure what this has to do with the Irish conception of the colours of the wind and the difference between bright and white though. 🤔

Allan Jul 31, 2023

@stancarey so everybody used to be synaesthesic?

@allancavanagh Or enough people to get the idea going. I wouldn't rule out a mushies ritual either

Allan Aug 1, 2023

@stancarey ha! Yes indeed.

FintanH Aug 1, 2023

@stancarey I always thought the coloured winds in Flann O'Brien's "The Third Policeman" were one of his own mad concoctions - I wonder how much overlap there is with the folklore?

@FintanH Fair few years since I last read The Third Policeman, so I don't remember the details. But it does feel like something straight from de Selby

#Language #Colour #Perception #Namibia #Ireland #MastoDaoine

@stancarey Wow. And the colours listed there remind me of the Himba of Namibia, who don't see the sky as blue, likely due to their language (as opposed to perception of colour).

@clickhere Yes, that's a linguistic rather than a perceptual thing. Blue is one of the later colour terms to join the basic sequence in a given vocabulary

Gerard Cunningham ✒️Aug 1, 2023

@stancarey @clickhere It'd be nice to see the original Irish words though. What am I to make of "Greyish Green", for example? Is that Liath? Is "Green" Glas or Gorm?

@faduda @clickhere Yes, it's a bit frustrating. I looked briefly in Saltair na Rann (the version on CELT) but didn't find the original description

@stancarey That's amazing, thank you!

@clickhere Guy Deutscher, whose book on linguistic relativity looks in depth at colour words, tried a little experiment on his daughter to see if she would identify the sky as blue without being prompted to: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/the-linguistics-of-colour-names/#comment-142152

The linguistics of colour names

The news website Vox has produced some good videos on linguistic topics, which can be found amidst their many other clips. Its latest one looks at the vexed question of colour names and categories …

Sentence first

@stancarey Oh wow! Ha, that reminds me of my friend's niece years ago, of a similar age (around 4 years), who one day asked him directly:

"Why is blue?"

(I'm not sure he's ever had an answer for her.)

@clickhere That question would keep a room of physicists, philosophers and psychologists busy for a whole afternoon

@stancarey Hah! It's a good question, all right.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/blusky.html

Sharrow_irl Aug 1, 2023

@clickhere @stancarey When I was expecting my firstborn, I looked this up and science says it is cos of the nitrogen which makes up aprox 70% of our atmosphere and the blue is from light bouncing off it. This is called Rayleigh scattering.

I've never forgotten

Blue Sky and Rayleigh Scattering

@Sharr0w @stancarey I wish he'd told her that on the Luas that day. But, alas, neither of them will ever know: "Why is blue?"

Yvonne Frindle Aug 1, 2023

@stancarey @clickhere I hadn't realised, until I read the comments, that musician Alma Deutscher's father was a linguist.

Meercat ✅  Aug 1, 2023

@stancarey @clickhere I vaguely remember reading that Ancient Greek had just one word for green and yellow. So it turned out to be true, then. Interesting stuff

Stan Carey Aug 2, 2023

@meercat0 I think the usual pattern is that after a language gains words for black, white, and red, the next one tends to be for green or yellow

Ian Hunt Aug 1, 2023

@stancarey have a feeling the interesting poet Trevor Joyce descends from Patrick Weston Joyce -- just checked, yes, he does.

@ianhunt P.W. did so much great work. I knew Trevor a bit on a previous platform; had forgotten about that connection

Ian Hunt Aug 1, 2023

@stancarey Trevor is a varied and surprising writer. Not sure if he's made it here yet, he probably will. On another subject: do you know Gerry Loose's book of Ogham translations/versions, The Great Book of the Woods? it's simply stunning. I keep giving it to people. It's a book you can see through as you read, into an entire worldview. https://www.corbelstonepress.com/product-page/the-great-book-of-the-woods