Stan CareyJul 31, 2023

An old folk belief in Ireland held that there are 12 different winds and each has its own colour

Also (from a different source) pigs can see the wind

https://archive.org/details/smallersocialhis00joycuoft/page/528/mode/2up
#folklore #IrishFolklore #wind #nature #Ireland #mastodaoine #pigs

A smaller social history of ancient Ireland : treating of the government, military system, and law ; religion, learning, and art ; trades, industries, and commerce ; manners, customs, and domestic life, of the ancient Irish people : Joyce, P. W. (Patrick Weston), 1827-1914 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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Internet Archive
Show threadJoan of Contention 😷Aug 1, 2023

@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).

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

Show threadStan Carey
@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
Aug 1, 2023 at 9:25amWeb
Show threadGerard 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?
Show threadStan CareyAug 1, 2023
@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
Show threadJoan of Contention 😷Aug 1, 2023
@stancarey That's amazing, thank you!
Show threadStan CareyAug 1, 2023
@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
Show threadJoan of Contention 😷Aug 1, 2023

@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.)

Show threadStan CareyAug 1, 2023
@clickhere That question would keep a room of physicists, philosophers and psychologists busy for a whole afternoon
Show threadJoan of Contention 😷Aug 1, 2023
@stancarey Hah! It's a good question, all right.
Show threadSharrow_irlAug 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.

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

I've never forgotten

Blue Sky and Rayleigh Scattering

Show threadJoan of Contention 😷Aug 1, 2023
@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?"
Show threadYvonne FrindleAug 1, 2023
@stancarey @clickhere I hadn't realised, until I read the comments, that musician Alma Deutscher's father was a linguist.
Show threadMeercat ✅ 
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
Show threadStan CareyAug 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