That's not what I meant

[ellestra]

The problem with languages are not just how they differ. Sometimes it's what's similar. All Indoeuropean languages started from the same root language and then in Europe they kept exchanging and borrowing words and using Latin and Greek to create new ones. But then the words that used to be common start to change meaning. First slightly but then

Comments

[prozacpark]

This is an incredibly interesting post to me...because of my obsessive level of interest in "The Oresteia." But I have no idea about the dyes and the coloring process, but that makes a lot of sense in the context of, um, well, THE ORESTEIA.

But the English translations always take me out because they would randomly translate the purple of the net that Klytemnestra uses to ensnare Agamemnon, the purple carpet she makes him walk on and the red of blood, which in Greek, is all supposed to be the SAME color/word, and then loses its symbolism because it gets translated as different ones in English translations.

[ellestra]

This is what is so often wrong with translations. There are shifts in meanings between language that make things like this incomprehensible. The Polish default for purple is taken from Tyrian purple (royal purple) which was a kind of dark red (that's how I imagine it - dark, cold red, maybe with slight blueish undertones) and, not surprisingly, Ancient Greeks had the same reference. So I think I read that but didn't really notice as it was pretty obviously colour of blood. Why in English the meaning got shifted to something that, to me, is pale violet (usually lilac like on the picture) I have no idea besides the fact that the dye can produce that colour.

This resulted in other shifts in meanings. I have a rain jacket that for me is in one of my favourite shades of blue - dark blue (maybe indigo if you insist) but the producer called the colour violet. Sometimes it almost feels like violet, being pushed out the warmer shades by purple, started to take over dark blues in English.