colors masterpost

[Th3Scribble]

goals for color words:

1. list a bunch of english equivalents that fit the space (no semicolons)
2. have the most "central" colors be first
3. emphasize that walo and pimeja aren't just pure white and black
4. explain the colors in a way that it's clear that laso isn't "two colors" while all the others are just one
5. have overlap in the definitions where applicable

loje, jelo, laso, walo, and pimeja are the main words this issue is for. we will also discuss the "bright" aspect of suno's meaning

[Th3Scribble]

my proposal:

loje: red, pink, orange, magenta, maroon
jelo: yellow, golden, cream, lime, orange
laso: teal, green, blue, cyan, violet, turquoise, sky, azure
walo: pale, white, cream, pink, gray, unsaturated
pimeja: dark, black, brown, maroon, navy blue, muddy color, gray
suno: bright, vibrant, shiny {+ other defs}

jelo for orange and lime might be controversial. some of these translations may not be clear that they're colors and not the things themselves (like "sky") but i'd like to get feedback on that

[lipamanka]

i really like basically all of this for the reasons you mentioned.

[gtbot2007]

my ideas for the pu colors:

loje: red, pink, magenta, scarlet, vermilion (maybe orange if you want that to let be in two places)
jelo: yellow, orange, lime
laso: cyan, green, blue, teal, indigo (notably not the word purple/violet since some purples are clearly loje)
walo: white, pale, light gray
pimeja: black, dark brown, dark gray

and also:
unu: purple
kapesi: brown, gray, bage dull

[AcipenserSturio]

The transition from "central word, anything in its surroundings" to "central word, a list of examples of all its surroundings" is messing with my brain and I wanted to complain - but I guess this puts it more in line with how other definitions already work. I don't love it but I will 🚀 it

[Th3Scribble]

i'm not sure what you mean
i tried to start with a central word, then its surroundings, then more specific shades
though i just noticed i tried to do this with loje by starting with "red, pink" and thinking people would include magenta in their idea of pink, but then i included magenta later
maybe i should start with "red, magenta"
idk the order probably doesn't matter too much

[RetSamys]

I think my complaint would be more that they seem a bit long, just a bit. I'd prefer 4 words max, per colour. Idk, it's arbitrary I know

[lipamanka]

@RetSamys I can't think of a good reason to limit it such, and because any technical limit would be much larger than four words, I think having a larger number makes more sense. but we can make it have a cutoff at some point. unless you can articulate the reason that you prefer four words maximum. I think that eight might be a good compromise?

ALSO re: orange in two places. I am HEAVILY in favor of demonstrating semantic overlap by having the same english word be in the definitions of two or more toki pona words. I think we should do this as much as possible to show that different words can mean the same thing, though I'm willing to compromise if people feel strongly against that.

[wasokeli]

can someone post the Linku and pu definitions?

[janPensa]

pu definitions and current Linku definitions are exactly the same:

loje - ADJECTIVE red, reddish
jelo - ADJECTIVE yellow, yellowish
laso - ADJECTIVE blue, green
walo - ADJECTIVE white, whitish; light-coloured, pale
pimeja - ADJECTIVE black, dark, unlit
(suno - ADJECTIVE sun; light, brightness, glow, radiance, shine; light source)

[janPensa]

I spent some time writing my thoughts about the color words and the discussion so far. It got a bit long, so I added some headers for structure.

shorter miscellaneous remarks

"sky"

some of these translations may not be clear that they're colors and not the things themselves (like "sky") but i'd like to get feedback on that

For things like "orange" and "cream", I think in context it's clear enough that colors are meant and not the physical objects/subtances. But yeah, for "sky" I'd change it to "sky blue" or "sky-colored".

"unsaturated"

walo: (...) unsaturated

This works relatively well in HSV color space, but it does not fit as well with HSL color space, or with how most artists use the term "saturation". Which, by the way, is why a lot of digital artists prefer HSL, and color pickers like this:

(In HSL, saturation corresponds to the X axis of this triangle. Note that #F00 goes towards #808080 when unsaturated, not towards #000.)

definition length

[the definitions] seem a bit long, just a bit. I'd prefer 4 words max, per colour.

I think 4 is too few, especially for laso, where we need more examples than four to be clear that we mean the entire spectrum from green to cyan to navy blue (and perhaps indigo or something).

I'd aim at around 5-6 words, and have 8 or so as the maximum.

amber

I think "amber" is a very good one to add to the "jelo" definition. Personally, I'd put it as the second word, after "yellow". Amber is around the middle point between orange and the very bright primary color version of yellow, or you could say that it's a shade of yellow at the outer edge of the "orange" part of the spectrum

on laso's "central" color

I think the first word in the definition for "laso" should probably be cyan, turquoise, teal, or a similar word.

Of those, three, I think turquoise is the best, for several reasons.

• if you look up examples of turquoise, both the color and the gem, you get a range of colors that includes ones I'd call "blue" and ones I'd call "green", not just ambiguous grue colors.
• "turquoise" seems to be the most well-known of the three. According to Google's Ngram viewer "turquoise" is about 4 times more common than "cyan" and "teal". Of course partially because of the gem, but I think the books in this corpus probably reference the color more often than the gem.
• Thanks to the gem, "turquoise" and its literal translations are a much more international name (including in many Germanic languages, Romance languages, a number of Slavic languages, and various non-Indo-European languages like Turkish, Arabic and Finnish). Non-native English speakers using the dictionary are going to find it easier to understand than e.g. "teal", and many Linku translators are going to have an easier time translating it.
• "teal" seems to be used a lot for dark shades of cyan/turquoise, so it's closer to the edge between laso and pimeja
• in many people's minds, "cyan" is specifically a color very similar to the primary color used in CMY(K) color schemes (hex code: #00FFFF), excluding too unsaturated variants or surrounding hues. Also, most shades of cyan are considered a type of blue by most English speakers, which is less the case with turquoise and teal.

about including "orange" (and "gray") in two places

I am HEAVILY in favor of demonstrating semantic overlap by having the same english word be in the definitions of two or more toki pona words.

I'm skeptical. I think this strategy only works well if you can count on people looking up both "loje" and "jelo" and comparing the definitions, or noticing the shared word. But with more casual use of the dictionary, I think more beginners are going to see one definition and make conclusions like "oh, I guess that orange = loje" without noticing that orange is listed under jelo as well. Listing the same word under two definitions and hoping people make the connection only really works well if you put the definitions side by side, and in Linku if you want to get the definitions of two related words side by side, you generally have to really go out of your way to find a good search term for that.

But, counterpoint: if beginners stay in the Toki Pona community for long enough, or if they use the Linku dictionary often enough, they are going to eventually notice that orange can be both loje and jelo. In the long term, it probably wouldn't matter much. But I still have the feeling that slapping "orange" into both definitions without explanations or clarifications could lead to unnecessary confusion among beginners. I might be wrong, though.

Also, the semantic space of the English word "orange" is so broad, that there are shades of orange that I'd personally never call "jelo", as well as shades of orange that I'd never call "loje". However, if we add a qualifier, such as "reddish orange" at loje and "yellowish orange" at jelo, then I'd be totally in favor.

Similarly, I wouldn't put "gray" in both "walo" and "pimeja" definitions, but I do think it's a good idea to have "light gray" and "dark gray" in there.

[lipamanka]

I think "yellowish orange" and "reddish orange" is a good compromise, but I can't think of any actual harm that could come from someone only noticing orange under either jelo or loje but not both. like, orange fits into both word's semantic spaces. a beginner doesn't need to know about the overlap directly, because words are presented individually. but cutting a piece out of a semantic space because of said overlap is kind of weird because it doesn't show the semantic space of one of the words to its full extent. do you see what I'm saying? I'm kind of rambling. I can give other examples if you don't understand.

The only reason I'm hesitant to just go ahead and put "yellowish orange" under jelo is because I don't want to have to do this for other words too. I think like the goals here is a definition accurately describes the semantic space of its word as accurately as possible and overlap shouldn't matter. but we have biases because of these overlaps, so in order to correct for those intentionally adding in overlap in multiple words is good and we should do it.

[janPensa]

I guess that my problem with "orange" is less so that it is at the overlap between loje and jelo, and more that I don't feel like "orange" overlaps enough with either loje or jelo. I.e. "orange" includes too many colors that aren't loje and too many colors that aren't jelo.

In this example image, I'd never call any color on the bottom row "jelo", and I'd never call any on the top row "jelo" (nor the one they labled "orange" in this image, first from the left in the middle row). But almost all of them I'd call orange without hesitation (except for the ones I marked with a blue X, which are too red/yellow/beige for me to call them orange)

If all (or the vast majority of) shades of orange were both jelo and loje, I wouldn't mind as much if we put it in both definitions. But "orange" is too broad. That's why splitting its color range up into "yellowish orange" and "reddish orange" seems useful to me, if we want to mention oranges at all.

And now that I think of it, once again the same holds true for "gray". There are many colors that are definitely "gray" but not "walo", and many that are definitely "gray" but not "pimeja".

[lipamanka]

I think this gets to the point where we're thinking too much about western color theory. I don't think people look at "orange" and then assume it includes

or

right? they're gonna think of

all of which could probably be "jelo" or "loje."

[janPensa]

Well, that's very subjective. For me personally, the left part of

seems too jelo to call it loje.

Also, in my experience, the first color people think of when they hear "orange" can vary a lot. For me, I the prototypical orange is more like

but when learning about color theory in various art classes, I've seen plenty of red-yellow-blue-based color wheels where this more yellowy color was labeled as orange (which, to be fair, is much closer to the color of the fruit):

and on those diagrams the "orange" I knew from all the markers and crayons of my youth was instead marked as "red-orange" or something like that.

Hearing "orange", some people will first think of these colors:

and others think first of these:

Those two ranges include these colors, of which I think there is going to be little disagreement about whether they are more jelo or loje.

Here they are next to "pure" yellow and red, for comparison

TL;DR: the word "orange" on its own can mean too many different things to various people, and it definitely includes colors that are not very loje or not very jelo. (Especially if you then also consider that users of Linku are going to be from very different cultures, which can each have a different average opinion about what a typical example of the color orange is.)

Therefore, I think it's not very useful to include "orange", unless we use "yellowish/reddish orange" or something similar