mother tree

[corvi]

Yesterday juli  and I went to an Artists' Garage Sale, where she convinced me to by some surplus Intensely Blue Paper being sold by a letterpress shop that I guess hadn't found a lot of use for All That Blueness Oh No So Blue.

I made a three-layer papercut. The layers don't actually match up very well, but I'm happy with it anyway, probably because all that Blue is affecting my cognitive function.  Need to solve the technical problem of how to transfer a design to multiple sheets. The answer is not "chalk dust," I have learned.

This is sort of the "mother tree" juli  and I half-glimpsed driving along Lake Baikal in Siberia in the middle of the night, racing to the Russian border before our visas expired. I didn't get a good look at it, just a quick impression of wind-twisted limbs almost hidden under dozens of blue silk prayer scarves. So I just make up what it looks like when I feel like depicting it.

The Mongolian language recognizes two separate colors, цэнхэр and хѳх, both described by the word "blue" in English, which I think is pretty neat. This one is хѳх.

For the past several months, I  have been working on convincing my brain that  "light blue" and "dark blue" are two separate colors, no more related than blue and green, the way a Mongolian would conceive of them. I'm very curious about how difficult this is, as an example of "language shapes thought," and how flexible brains are about that sort of thing.

Convincing Myself There Is No Such Color As Blue: I have weird hobbies.

Comments

[thnidu]

Russian also distinguishes these, as синий (dark blue) and голубой (light blue; ? from голубь 'dove').

[corvi]

Does голубой also include grey? I know language usually isn't that logical, but I'm curious. :)

[thnidu]

Apparently not. Translations I've seen are blue, azure, light blue, sky blue, aqua. For gray in Russian, Google Translate lists серый, седой, пасмурный, мрачный, сумрачный, бледный.

In English we speak of "dove-gray", which I associate with the mourning dovehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mourning_dove. But

In general, the terms "dove" and "pigeon" are used somewhat interchangeably. … In ornithological practice, "dove" tends to be used for smaller species and "pigeon" for larger ones, but this is in no way consistently applied, and historically, the common names for these birds involve a great deal of variation between the terms. The species most commonly referred to as "pigeon" is the feral rock pigeon, common in many cities. (Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbidae)

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the meaning of голубой derives from the pigeon, aka rock dove:

The Rock Dove (Columba livia) or Rock Pigeon, is a member of the bird family Columbidae (doves and pigeons). In common usage, this bird is often simply referred to as the "pigeon". … Wild Rock Doves are pale grey with two black bars on each wing, although domestic and feral pigeons are very variable in colour and pattern. … It has a dark bluish-gray head, neck, and chest with glossy yellowish, greenish, and reddish-purple iridescence along its neck and wing feathers. (YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBDzpi0ikiU )

Respectfully submitted, Dr. Whom: Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody