Colors...

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Hi, everyone. I've been doing a ten-word vocabulary list for each week, and I came across some confusing stuff in relation to colors.

Крáсный is red, that's straightforward enough... but the other two colors I was trying for (green and blue) didn't have a clear name...

Green, by my dictionary, is зелёный. Normally my dictionary accents things, but it didn't-- I'm not sure where the stress ought to fall on this. And, to further confuse things, lingvo.ru said that it was зелeный... still no hint as to where the stress goes.

And then blue-- in my dictionary, it was listed as two seperate words: синий (with the first и accented) for dark blue, and голбóй as light blue. How does this work? Is there no adjective that describes both of them? I mean, I could talk about cyan and turqouise, but you could also basically describe the two of them as blue. Lingvo, again, was no help on this, as it showed three words for blue.

Thanks in advance.

Comments

[wretched-girl.livejournal.com]

синий is just generally blue. and i wont comment on accents, because i am not russian.

[centralasian.livejournal.com]

"зелёный" is correct; and the accent is always on "ё"; always, no exception.

now, it is allowed to change "ё" to "e" in writing, yet you have to still to pronounce it as "ё" ("yo").

for blue, that's tricky; we have the same issues when trying to translate russian "голубóй" (accent on у, notice that you missed it in your posting).

"blue" covers both "голубóй" and "синий"; we use the first for light-blue, and the second for "just blue". although, it can also cover what you call "navy blue", or "indigo", i guess.

welcome to cross-cultural difference of color perception :))

[centralasian.livejournal.com]

oops, in "голубóй" the accent is of course on the second "o", sorry - i meant to make "у" bold to show you missed it, and then also made it accentuated; wrong :(

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Ah. Okay. So it's ga-loo-BOY?

[kart.livejournal.com]

да.

[centralasian.livejournal.com]

yep, that's right

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

From my understanding of the Russian pronunciation, голýбой, as I suppose it should be marked, would be pronounced ga-LOO-boy?

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

You're wrong. It's ga-loo-BOY.

[cema.livejournal.com]

There are exceptions in compund words like "трёхма́чтовый", but otherwise the stress is indeed always on ё.

[mivlad.livejournal.com]

There is a double stress in "трёхмачтовый", so ё is still stressed.

To apollotiger:
You will also probably have problems translating colors like magenta. What makes the problem even worse is that many native Russian speakers do not name these colors right. For example, "сиреневый" (something in between magenta and purple) is often called "фиолетовый" (violet), especially among computer geeks because the computer screen can't show the real violet.

[noser.livejournal.com]

When there's a ё, the stress falls on it in 99.9% of the cases.

However, the dots above ё are often omitted. Obviously, such books are meant to be used by people who already know the correct pronunciation. Don't use such books for learning Russian.

On the blue vs light blue: I don't understand your question "How does this work?". Imagine if red and green were a single word in Russian, and I would ask you "How does this work?" Simple: you call red red and green green.

[noser.livejournal.com]

Read: "How does this work in English?"

[beowabbit]

When there's a ё, the stress falls on it in 99.9% of the cases.

I am not a native speaker, or even a good speaker, but the only exceptions I’ve ever seen are compound words with two stresses, like зелёно-серый (greenish-grey), where there are two stresses.

[noser.livejournal.com]

You're right. This happens when you put two stems together. E.g., "трёхсотый" (= "three hundredth")

[kart.livejournal.com]

in 99.9% of the cases

.... ёжик?

[nemica.livejournal.com]

Hey, the stress is still on "ё"! :)))

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Is ё a fairly rare letter? I've been doing Russian for a while, and the only words in which I've come across it are пёс and зелёный...

[noser.livejournal.com]

Well, depends. I know probably a hundred or more common words with ё, but it's certainly the rarest vowel. The problem is, as I already said, the dots are often omitted and it's a shame.

For those fluent in Russian, here's a good article about Ё, it's history and "discrimination" discussed:

http://www.russian.slavica.org/article389.html

[gvadelupa.livejournal.com]

BTW, there is a russian-speaking community in LiveJournal of defenders of letter "ё". They struggle for way of writing of this letter always with two dots above it and for correct use of this letter in all cases.

[gvadelupa.livejournal.com]

Буква Ё community (http://www.livejournal.com/community/bukva_yo/)

wow %))

[melkiyshaman.livejournal.com]

Being a native-speaker, I usually omit the dots above Ё :) And it never occurred to me, that it may cause any difficulties to anyone :) I'll try to keep it in mind and not to "discriminate" this letter :)
And _the_struggle_ for the rights (lol:) of poor Ё looks rather funny %))

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Лёд (ice,) мёртвый (dead,) ёлка (variant of ель, fir-tree,) щёлкать (to click,) бёдра (plural: the hips,) он поёт (he sings...) - there's plenty of them.

[kart.livejournal.com]

The stress is on the 2nd syllable in зелёный. Your dictionary probably just neglected to typeset an accent above the ё. As you have seen from searching the web, people often don't bother to write ё because е is easier and the pronounciation is understood.

Russian makes a distinction between light blue (голубой) and dark blue (синий). Just remember to use whichever word is appropriate for the particular shade of blue that you are talking about.

The boundaries between different colors are variable and can be quite different from one language to another. The English language makes a distinction between red and light-red (pink). Russian is the same way, but with blue. The Navajo language has a single word that means both green and blue. The Kurdish language is even weirder, with a pair of green/blue words can mean either green or blue depending on whether you are talking about animate or inanimate objects!

[onodera.livejournal.com]

Be careful when using «красный» as well.
'He has red hair' does not equal «У него красные волосы». For reddish-orange (uh, ginger?) color we have a special word «рыжий».
P.S. And the word for bright red (as the USSR flag) is «алый», though you don't hear this word much nowadays.