I'm re-reading one of my all-time favorite books : Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. I first read it 20 years ago in college, perfect for a young person journeying into adulthood.
Now that I'm 20 years older, I'm doubly delighted to find that it's still a wonderful novel. It stands the test of time. ;-)
In college, I studied African languages, Linguistics, & Literature at UW-Madison. In Yoruba (a West African language), they had words for only 3 colors : light, dark, and red. As a native American English speaker, I thought this was very odd--until I learned this system was actually MORE descriptive than our own American English. If you wanted to say green, you'd say, "dark like leaves." If you wanted to say blue, you'd say "light (or dark) like sky." If you wanted to say yellow, you'd say, "Light like the sun." You can actually get much more precision in color this way. This is something I picked up on in my second reading of Song of Solomon. Near the beginning, Pilate Dead (great name!) is talking about colors, the blue ribbons on her mother's bonnet, and the many variations on the color black :
"You think dark is just one color, but it ain't. There's five or six kinds of black. Some silky, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don't stay still. It moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is just before it breaks loose to storm? Well, night black is the same way. May as well be a rainbow." (p. 40 Song of Solomon).
To see what I mean, take a look at the variety of black fabrics at this online quilt shop.
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