2458
_EDIT: Started a bounty with hope of getting more definitive and elaborate
answers, e.g. timeline of when color names started being used in Japan._

In Japanese language, there are colors that are i-adjectives: 青い, 赤い, 黒い, 白い
etc.

Then there are colors that are original nouns: 緑 {みどり}, 紫 {むらさき} etc.

And finally color nouns that are made of [something]-色: 茶色 {ちゃいろ}, 黄色 {きいろ} ,
灰色 {はいいろ}, 桃色 {ももいろ}, 銀色 {ぎんいろ} etc.

**Why are there different word classes for colors in Japanese?** Is it because
they have different historical backgrounds and etymologies?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-07-29T09:03:44.553
2288
2014-05-10T14:00:09.723
2011-08-03T14:52:31.287
112
112
question
vocabulary etymology
Historical differences between colors that are i-adjectives and those that are simply nouns
There is a study by Berlin and Kay that colors are scaled from the basic ones
to the advanced ones. The more basic, the more likely that it will have a
mono-morphemic word representing it in a language. There is also an
implication relation: 'If language _A_ has a mono-morphemic color term _W_ ,
then it will also have mono-morphemic words for the more basic colors.' What
you found follows this scale. Colors like red, black, white are basic colors
and a mono-morphemic word representing them exist in many languages. Green and
purple are more advanced, brown, gray, pink, silver are even advanced. That
indicates that at some old time, Japanese only had the colors that correspond
to the i-adjectives. Later, some more colors were added, and even later, no
new color words were added but people just used some things with that color to
refer to the color.

Edit: Sorry. Blue was not a basic color. The overall tendency of the
generalization is correct, but there are some exceptions.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-07-29T14:09:58.967
2307
2011-07-29T14:24:33.740
2011-07-29T14:24:33.740
2288
answer
Let's talk about い-adjectives: `暗いペンを作ってる。` In pre-kanji Japanese language,
adjectives had an い ending. They always end with い、あ、お、or う before the い
suffix. They never end with え, as in せ, れ, て, or け. The reason there are many
い-adjectives is because they were inherent to Japanese language, even before
Japanese people began using Chinese characters in writing. Arguably, there was
no written language before the Golden Scrolls came to Japan, though. We have
to base our assumptions on word of mouth, decryption of artifacts, and early
writing in Japan, so it's difficult to be sure. Anyway, い-adjectives are used
for abstract and concrete concepts because the words were originally
い-adjectives and not derived from nouns, like の and な adjectives both were.

Let's talk about な-adjectives: `紫なペンを作ってる。` な-adjectives are words that were
added to the Japanese language as nouns. な was added to the end of nouns which
seemed to have a use as an adjective. Na-adjectives can have あ、い、う、え、or お
before the な suffix. People _never_ use な with colors, as in 紫なペン, except when
they're using their own vocabulary. For example, if you have a desk full of
different kinds of purple pens, you could ask someone if they liked 紫な;
however, nobody would say that. People always say こんな紫のペン. The reason you
don't see any な-adjective colors is because colors are extremely simple to
understand--objective/concrete--unlike い-adjectives which embody both abstract
and concrete concepts, and の-adjectives, which are for concrete concepts,
only. な-adjectives are used to describe abstract/subjective things, only.

And about の-adjectives: `グレーのペンを作ってる。` They're a lot like な-adjectives, but
they're for concrete/objective concepts, only. It's possible to think of な-
and の-adjectives with colors: `こんな色->colors like this` and `この色->this color`.
I think that some linguists call na-adjectives 'adjectival nouns' because they
are "derived from nouns", but な-adjectives are actually derived from
の-adjectives, which are derived from "nouns". Perhaps it's confusion with the
possessive form: `あなたのペン->your pen`? If you say `紫のペン->a purple pen`, purple
is definitely an adjective in translation. 'Purple's pen' wouldn't make sense,
in translation. Many color words are の-adjectives. の-adjectives are thought of
in the spirit of the possessive tense, though, in that the adjective's
qualities are contained in a specific object or set of objects.

Combining our knowledge of い-, な-, and の-adjectives, we can say: only い- and
の-adjectives exist for colors. So, we know that colors are thought of as being
concrete concept.

Dialects: 茶色 means tea-colored. Since the birth of kanji, Japanese people have
been combining kanji to form meaning. In English, we use a hyphen to indicate
an adverb, and an adverb can take an adjective's place, becoming an adverbial
adjective. In Japanese, there are so many compound words, and we have suffixes
indicating part of speech, so it would be over-productive to hyphenate.

Besides, kanji is more complicated than the English parts of speech
accommodate. For example, `馬鹿` means horse-deer (originally an idiom). Because
it's an idiom, we have to think of the relationship between the words to
understand the meaning. It's from ancient Chinese history. One of the emperors
of China never wanted his subjects to undermine him, so he had all of his
advisers come to him for a test. The emperor called a horse a deer in front of
his advisers. He killed each adviser who corrected him. People thought that
this strategy of divining an adviser's competence was stupid, and an idiom was
developed in China: 'horse-deer'--"as stupid as calling a horse a deer" or "as
stupid as correcting the emperor who calls a horse a deer", perhaps. It's very
complicated.

Words like 茶色 (chairo) and 馬鹿な (bakana) adapted into the Japanese language,
despite their complexity. Because Japanese language was influenced by the
native あいぬ, immigrant Koreans, and immigrant Chinese, there were many options
and dialects; however, 茶色 and 馬鹿な are a standard because, for some reason or
another, people accepted the dialect.

色 history, from the birth of kanji in Japan: Why do I say "since the birth of
kanji"? Because 色 is one of the kanji included in the Golden Scrolls that were
initially sent to Japan, from China. The first record of Chinese characters
being used in any significant way, in Japan, was during the time when the
Golden Scrolls were sent to Japan. The Golden Scrolls were some of the first
documents sent to Japan. It's not the first document, but it's very close to
the top of the list. When the Golden Scrolls came to Japan, the Chinese
basically gave Japan their first definitive writing system.

I think that い-adjectives and な-adjectives likely existed prior to
の-adjectives because I have been told that many times. History teachers and
text books have told me that な-adjectives were used in conjunction with nouns
to form adjectives, and with foreign words that were abstract and fit better
as adjectives than as nouns. の-adjectives were a later distinction.... If you
actually look at Japanese writing, though, they pretty much all come at the
same time (right when the initial phonetic alphabet, man'yōgana, came into
place). At this point, Japanese people were using all three kinds of
adjectives. Perhaps the people who wrote the books did some kind of comparison
of man'yōgana to older Japanese texts, in an attempt to get more in touch with
their history, and this is why people are taught that adjectives came about in
this order?

In terms of history, who can be sure, though? The pronunciation of Japanese
words, even beyond 500 AD, isn't clear to anybody. This is because there was
no commonly used phonetic alphabet, and because so many dialects were
borrowed. There was a lot of immigration to Japan in the early days of
Japanese writing. Japan had many local dialects, as well. It wasn't until much
later that a unified Japanese language was formed. The creators of today's
official Japanese language appreciated language, much as we do today, for an
art form. That, combined with the simplicity of seeing 色 and knowing _it's a
color_ , is probably why they chose to use words like 茶色 rather than some pre-
existing い-adjective. Now, if there ever was an い-adjective for 茶色, it's
deprecated.

Anyway, the kanji 色 first came to Japan in 57 AD. 色 was originally used like
表情 with 顔色, and it means: 'the expression on the face'. Other than that, it's
used with color. That's the purpose of the kanji..., to identify color, as
counters indicate something you're counting. The kanji is supposed to be two
lovers sitting next to each other, looking at each other, and reading each
others emotions. So, 色 is like: 'you can tell if you look closely'.

Great Seal Scroll characters came to Japan as Han-period Chinese writing (206
BCE–220 CE). It looks different today, but 色 has basically been there since
the beginning of written language, and therefore historical records of
language, in Japan. You can basically assume that it's always been used with
colors. I know for sure that it was used prior to 622 AD in association with
colors, in authentic Japanese, because the librarian at our school showed us
the kanji being used in a texts. 色 just happened to be used, which was
exciting for us. The book explained how Chinese writing was hard to discern
from authentic Japanese writing, but this was one of the ways....

The writer of the poem, which we couldn't actually understand, appears to be
either Japanese, or some eccentric Chinese person who wasn't using Chinese
properly, due to the syntax. There's some hentai kanbun. Maybe it's still a
Chinese person, trying to describe something, but it seems like a bunch of
Chinese characters that don't belong together. For example, if I were to say
something in English like: "It's super-cala-fragil-ist-ic." There are too many
word parts, and it looks very odd.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-08-03T16:11:51.883
2421
2011-08-07T02:45:48.227
2011-08-07T02:45:48.227
544
544
2288
answer
Surprisingly, I wasn't able to find much information on this outside
Wikipedia, even though it's popular trivia in Japan, but here's data from [a
book about color
names](http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=HuAWhi8z0uMC&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=%E3%80%81%E8%A4%87%E5%90%88%E8%AA%9E%E3%80%81%E5%A4%96%E6%9D%A5%E8%AA%9E%E3%80%80%E2%80%9D%E8%89%B2%E5%90%8D%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=Jw2pkqt4Cq&sig=W7BwHu-
d_bKVrovDR3ciL_5Mn8o&hl=ja&ei=tm47TsXbH8PXmAXRpPXmAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%E7%8E%84&f=false):

In China circa 1000 BCE, the only kanji evidenced is white. By 820 BCE, this
grows to white, yellow, orange-red, and green-blue-black. In 770, 赤 is no
longer used for orange. In 750, 青 is invented for green-blue, and by 720 緑 is
invented for green and 黒 for pitch black.

So much for the use of kanji, which presumably had strong influence on Japan
when they were imported in the first millennium AD. What about Japan's native
words? According to
[Wikipedia](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%89%B2%E5%90%8D#.E3.83.90.E3.83.BC.E3.83.AA.E3.83.B3.E3.81.A8.E3.82.B1.E3.82.A4.E3.81.AE.E5.9F.BA.E6.9C.AC.E8.89.B2.E5.90.8D),
they are the following:

Aka（赤）which shares an origin with "akarusi" (bright), "ake-/aku" (open),
"akaaka to" (brilliantly/flaming) etc.

Kuro（黒）which shares an origin with "kurasi" (dark), "kure-/kuru" (darken/end)
etc.

Siro（白）which shares an origin with "sirusi" (mark), "siru" (knowledge),
"sirasira to" (obvious speech). Apparently the original word is Old Japanese
"sirusi".

Awo（青）which shares an origin with "awi", the plant indigo, and which is
claimed to be the antonym of siro.

Therefore, it is claimed, ancient Japanese had four colors: light-warm, dark-
cool, distinct, and indistinct. In the transition to medieval Japanese, light
became red, dark became black, distinct became white, and indistinct became
blue-green. These comprise the four i-adjective colors.

The origin of midori is unknown.

Later, as another commentator said, "iro" was added to words to mean "the
appearance of tea" etc., and later still color words were borrowed outright
from English. 黄色, yellow, comes from the appearance of sprouts.

For more information, Wikipedia has some book recommendations at the bottom of
its color names page.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2011-08-05T04:38:10.770
2458
2014-05-10T14:00:09.723
2014-05-10T14:00:09.723
2960
583
2288
answer