Hello David, love your work and i hope you are well! If you are still taking High Valyrian questions, I have one about the words for colors (or should I say color groups in this case...?). Was there a particular inspiration or reasoning behind which colors got grouped together under which word?
Thank you and have a nice day!
We know a lot about how color terms evolve over the years. There are some common patterns regarding when new color terms emerge. In conlanging, the goal is to figure out where on that trajectory your conlang's speakers lie (assuming they're humans and the evolution is more or less natural). The landmark study was done by Berlin and Kay in 1969. The snapshot version of it is this:
STAGE 1: white vs. black
STAGE 2: white, black, red
STAGE 3: white, black, red, green, yellow
STAGE 4: white, black, red, green, yellow, blue
STAGE 5: white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown
STAGE 6: everything
High Valyrian is at stage 3. Now, it's very important to remember that we're talking about the development of color terms, not color perception. Individual variation aside, human eyes are the same and perceive things just as well now as they used to. That is, just because a language has fewer color terms doesn't mean those speakers can't distinguish between the two colors. Consider that we can have varying shades of what we would call sky blue and just because we'd call them all "blue" or even call them all "sky blue" doesn't mean we can't pick out a pattern going from dark to light and repeating quite easily. Basically, as differentiating color becomes more commercially important, more terms emerge.
So, long story short, I decided it would be good for High Valyrian to be at stage 3, because then it would be more interesting for the daughter languages. That is, if there's no distinction between blue and green (both kasta), maybe northern daughter languages have kasta as "blue" and take some other word for "green" based on "leaf", or something, while the southwestern languages use kasta for "green", and maybe add iēdar "water" on the front of kasta for "blue", or something like that. Thus the daughter languages can be grouped by the new color terms that developed as their speakers left the Valyrian Peninsula and settled in their new home. If High Valyrian was already stage 6 the result would be far less interesting.
That's the story behind it. :)
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Anyone else feeling burnt out by streaming services because any time you start a show the company expects an immediate audience and a fucking worldwide campaign of support or they’ll cancel it.
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Okay, you can’t use Fred as the one to represent “awful, misogynistic, privileged white men” when that man was always a golden retriever of a human being.
In Mystery Incorporated, he cried because of how emotional he himself always is, he got instant PTSD in an episode where Daphne got kidnapped and for majority of the series, Daphne was just BEGGING for him to fuck her but he was oblivious and respected their friendship.
Shut up, Fred is a good boy.
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Something I really love about The Last Of Us are these subtle little moments that showcase the real intelligence required for survival.
Bill wearing his hat in the dark during that shootout to keep the rainwater out of his eyes.
Bill didn't get shot because he was standing out in the open. The flamethrowers would have been too bright for the gunmen to see him. He was shot because he gave away his position when he yelled.
Joel seeing the bleach on top of the refrigerator, which is what made him think to look in the fridge for battery components.
Tess's skill with social engineering warranting an entire post of its own.
Ellie noticing Joel's hearing being shot on his right.
Honestly basically everything Bill did.
Like, they earned it, and you can see it in so many little moments.
Then you have Frank, who fell in a hole, and won the apocalypse. And I respect this dichotomy SO MUCH.
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This is sooo Visenya
Waist, wig and walk. Shes about to go to war and shes serving??
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