Huang2 ("Yellow")

[Altair]

Can someone opine about the precise meaning of "huang2"? I believe I once read that although this word is usually rendered in English as "yellow," it also traditionally covered the meaning of "brown." Hence, the Huang2 He2 should really be the Brown River, rather than the Yellow River. Apparently, "brown cows" and "brown earth" are also huang2? Can anyone confirm this? Is this sun also huang2, or is it usually some other shade?

[bathrobe]

Since coming to Hainan, I've found that 黄牛 refers to ordinary cattle, as opposed to 水牛, which are water buffalo. The 黄牛 I've seen were not exactly brown. In fact, they seemed to be a light buff colour. (Forgive me, colour terms are not my forte, either).

[Shi Rui'en]

From what I remember Huang2 is one of those special characters that are fun to read about. I think the current meaning is "yellow" although I think I once heard it has something to do with pornography. Maybe?

[bathrobe]

I once heard it has something to do with pornography

Still does.

[shibo77]

黄 huang2 means yellow, in modern Chinese it can act as an adjective or a noun. It can also mean pronography because it is the colour of the skin for Chinese. I don't think that it ever meant brown. Perhaps you know of this legendary character 黄帝 Huang2 Di4 "(the) Yellow Emperor". He was supposed to have lived about 5000 years ago. Even then, 黄 huang2 referred to the word "yellow".

I hope this helped.

- Shibo

[back]

一、一般来说，黄色yellow和棕／褐色brown是不一样的，但也有一种颜色，叫做“综黄”色，应该是介于黄色和棕色之间的颜色。

I don't think that it ever meant brown.

二、黄一般指颜色。不过黄颜色和中国，或者说中华民族有不解之缘：黄帝、黄山、黄河、黄皮肤、黄土地 （黄颜色也是古时候皇帝的衣服特有的颜色）

三、现在很多时候指色情的书刊、电影、录像等 [porn;pornography]。如:扫黄、黄色小说、黄色电影。。。

[eric]

pr0n

[Altair]

Thanks for the interesting and informative responsing.

I must confess that I still have some doubts as to what 黄 originally meant. If the term could apply to people, cows, earth, and a muddy river, "yellow" in the English sense does not seem to make sense. "Yellow" in my opinion almost almost always implies a fairly bright color.

I am also suspicious that the two words for brown, 棕／褐, seem to indicate things first, and colors only secondarily. (I.e., "palm" and "coarse cloth.") This sounds like an attempt to add precision to an already existing color system.

How about the following hypothesis: Chinese originally had five color words, hei1, bai3, hong2, qing1, and huang2. "Hei" and "bai" simply meant black and white, the colors of the night sky and snow. "Hong" referred to the color of blood and fire. "Qing" was the color of living nature, including leaves and the sky. And "huang" was the color of non-living nature, i.e., the earth. People and cows were then called "earth colored." Does this have any plausibility?

By the way, in Chinese, what are the normal colors given to the sun and to leaves in the fall? What would "shu4 ye4 huang2 le" mean?

[back]

褐色和棕色我一直分辨地不清楚，似乎是一样的。

可以形容太阳和落叶：金色的太阳，金色落叶。

[shibo77]

Hey Altair! Your posts are very very interesting! It gives me pause.

Some questions are pretty simple, but if you are really interested in Classical Chinese, Middle Chinese, then I would recommend books instead of a forum like this.

褐 he4 light brown Latin: fulvus, -a, -um

棕 zong1 dark brown Latin: adustus, -a, -um

Also European laguages often have a lot of colour for "brown", such as chestnut brown, hazel brown... Hopefully you know of Radicals (Determinatives) in a Chinese character, that would solve your problem. 褐 he4, 棕 zong1, are both categorised as category 3, 形聲xing2 sheng1 "form and sound", which means that the radical shows the meaning, the inserted word shows the pronounciation. 衣is the cloth radical, in fact, even in its modern formal meaning,

褐 1: (formal) "coarse cloth or clothing"

2: "light brown or brown"

This is the same in Middle Chinese, 白居易(Tang) "褐绫袍厚暖." 绫 ling is a type of silk cloth, which 褐 is modifying, 褐绫 brown cloth.

Later, it came to be used to describe the colour of coarse cloth and brown in general.

棕(椶) zong1 has the 木 radical, meaning wood, wooden. The 宗 zong1 part shows the pronounciation. This means:

棕 1: "palm, palm tree, palm fibre."

2: "coir"

3: "the brown colour, dark brown, chocolate brown."

The character was not used in Middle Chinese to mean the colour brown, it only appeared in a word (2 characters) in a description of flora and fauna from Yunnan 棕榈 zong1 lü3. But was never used separately to show colour then.

Later, it came to be used to describe the colour of palm fibres and brown in general.

As for 黄huang2, it's Classical Chinese, Middle Chinese, Modern Chinese meaning were/are definitely the meaning of the colour "yellow", yellow in english does not necessarily mean bright yellow. One has to add the adjective "bright", one can also add the adjective "dark", or "brown", yellowish-brown, and all different colours can emerge. This is the same with Chinese. As for its meaning in Ancient/Old Chinese, its meanings would be debatable. This character is very ancient, it hasn't changed a bit. Even its 金文Bronze Script equivalent is almost exactly the same. Though I don't know how its Oracle Bone equivalent looked, or whether or not it had an equivalent then. The origin of this character is also debatable, but you can see its two soil at the top 土土. Soil surrounding the ancient Chinese 黄河流域Yellow River valley were of a dark to light yellow colour. People call the Yellow River, Yellow River, because it is yellow, not brown. this is due to heavy deforestation up river in 陕西, 山西 Shaanxi, Shanxi provinces since about -300. I can theorise about the bottom part 由 and its two supporters. But I don't know what the true origin is. Sorry, this hasn't been very helpful! As for original Chinese colours, that is a really interesting idea, definitely true, but I can not answer that. People are still researching into Classical Chinese, Ancient/Old Chinese is almost an enigma. Your question will be very difficult to answer because think of it this way, what if I asked you about the word for colour in Ancient Latin or Greek? Which colours existed and which colours came first? What were the origin for them? For example, Classical Latin: to describe the brown colour of chestnut spadix, which came from a horse breed which had chestnut-brown colour, also called spadix. It's a really difficult question to answer.

Sorry!

- Shibo

[handbus]

some modification to shibo77's explanation:

the radical 礻means "show, express and display"

so most of the characters with this radical have a meaning of some relationship with talking, hearing, looking or praying.

the word "电视 dian2 shi4" means TV.

the word "祈祷 qi3 dao3" means praying.

so the character "褐 he4" has the only meaning, brown color.

"棕 zong1" has the original meaning of palm, a kind of tree. Since the color of its fiber is brown, then the character has the meaning of brown color.

there is another word "咖啡 ka1 fei1" with the meaning of brown while it's original meaning is Coffee.

With the colors of different kind of coffee, we may distinguish "褐","棕","咖啡" more easily.

brown coffee with a color of "褐"

coffee with much milk is of a "棕" color

coffee with little milk is the color of "咖啡"

[DavidHan]

ah, after all, huang2 means " yellow", right?? Atleast, it's right in vietnammese, hihihi. ( I don't know Chinese)

[shibo77]

I just learnt that 黄huang2 can also mean gold, golden. 黄帝 therefore, also means the Golden Emperor.

- Shibo

[bathrobe]

In bird names, 褐 is usually equivalent to English names with 'brown'; 棕 is usually equivalent to English names with 'rufous'.