Color Light Language

[Durakken]

[snip]The thing this is for is a Fairy, btw.
The problem i see with the positioning thing is how hard that would be, not to "do," but it would result in problem with communication when moving, like when you are walking down the street. I could see it used in "some" languages from this family like when communicating with a human whom they can move faster than and so can use that, but if you have 2 fairies flying at max speed to go into battle you can't go faster or fall back or something weird like that. ASL pretty much assumes that you're going to be looking at them and standing still. With light I think it is just a little better simply because you can be brighter and you can catch it out of the side of your eye or just turn your head or something.

I could see a logographic system for the IPA as an Light to Audio conversion but I'm not sure for native Fairy languages. I don't see how it would work, unless i create some specialized language.

Actually, my mom and I can sign and walk (or drive, ride a horse, run, swim underwater) at the same time - sign language /doesn't/ assume you'll be stationary. There are even built-in redundancies, such as mouthing words during a sign to clarify meaning between similar signs which, in your case, would be resolved by color-changing.

I was only using a ball of light and a 3x3x3 cube to simplify the idea of utilizable space. From experience with finger-spelling, visually representing a language phoneme-by-phoneme quickly becomes very unwieldy and tiring, for both speaker and listener, especially when representing complex ideas and thoughts. While changing colors isn't as physical as changing handshapes, I'd imagine that there's some kind of energy cost involved. In my personal opinion, this type of language would fit really neatly with a sign language of some sort.*

I'm not trying to say that this is exactly what you have to do, I'm just trying to give you another dimension to work with in order to make a richer, more expressive language. If you only want them to communicate in light, then by all means, go for it. Another thing you could do is check out Morse Code (using a timed system of flashes, akin to how long and short vowels change the meaning of a word.)

*I just thought of this: check out Tinkerbell in Disney's Peter Pan. Since she can't communicate vocally, she uses her light and motions to communicate herself to Peter and the others. In this particular case, her emotions are conveyed through light while she mimes what she's trying to say, so it's not exactly a full language, but still, she's using light and motion to convey her thoughts.

I didn't point out that they are Fairies to ignore what you were saying, just to help in the discussion.
I also am not opposed using something, but I'm trying to think of how i might naturally develop. I just can't see a natural Fairy Language spoken between Fairies as having the motion thing. And I don't see how producing light, if it's natural for them to do would be all that strenuous. Our vocal chords have adapted to be used for speech and I see no reason why if we're supposing a group that has adapted to use light as their speech would get tired like that, where as hand and arms aren't meant for language and never adapted for that so the rapid movements and all like that would cause more stress so you'd find ways of doing things like that.

Another thing to consider is that with signing is that when you are moving say forward and then you move your hand forward you have a base position for your hand relative to your body where as a Fairy or an orb or what have you wouldn't because there is nothing to give it that.

[Orima-Kazooie]

Vowel: Brightness = 5 & Colors are 0 or 5

Each language in color would likely have 4 vowels;
Blue/Lime/Cyan = invisible/water/land/sky/forest
Red/Fuschia = fire/heat/blood/life/warning
Yellow = sickness/ fear/ danger
White = abundance/wholeness

And while there are 1,296 possible color variations in this set up I don't see why any language would do that instead I think I'd rather take the same tact as verbal languages which on average have 4.25 consonants to vowels. So any color light language taking this would likely have 17-30 consonants used.

I also see that Brightness would be something like an accent...

So, starting off... i think these vowels should work
Lime
Cyan
Red
Yellow
White

Leaving out blue, for this language, because blue is likely hard to see in any environment as either being too dark or the environ is blue in general anyways.

This would mean roughly 21 consonant colors. Have no idea how to select these.

Why would you need vowels? We use vowels because it's physically impossible (or at least really difficult) to speak a word without one. But if they're using a different way of creating their "sounds," then the separation of vowels and consonants is meaningless. After all, every color (in its simplest, "default" form) should be "articulated" the same way, so the distinction is lost anyway.
It'd make more sense to allow any string of colors where one could easily be differentiated from the next, I think

[Melteor]

This reminds me that Kandinsky had a color theory based on Synaesthesia that directly associated qualities from one to the other I.e. timber and pitch might've been associated with saturation or tone. It's somewhere online I bet.

[ccaccus]

I didn't point out that they are Fairies to ignore what you were saying, just to help in the discussion.
I also am not opposed using something, but I'm trying to think of how i might naturally develop. I just can't see a natural Fairy Language spoken between Fairies as having the motion thing. And I don't see how producing light, if it's natural for them to do would be all that strenuous. Our vocal chords have adapted to be used for speech and I see no reason why if we're supposing a group that has adapted to use light as their speech would get tired like that, where as hand and arms aren't meant for language and never adapted for that so the rapid movements and all like that would cause more stress so you'd find ways of doing things like that.

Another thing to consider is that with signing is that when you are moving say forward and then you move your hand forward you have a base position for your hand relative to your body where as a Fairy or an orb or what have you wouldn't because there is nothing to give it that.

True, a fairy's mind may have developed to process visual stimuli well beyond that of a human to cope with conversing by light. I'm not sure of the physiology of your fairies, either, so I can't give definite assistance there.

For me, it seems that a language developed through visual stimuli rather than aural would make use of extra possibilities. I find it hard to believe that two fairies could sit across from one another and simply flash at one another without some movement to enhance meaning. Being a visual language, I'd expect there to be body language/gestures of some sort. Akin to how outlying sounds eventually become normal tokens as languages evolve, I'd expect this to become regularized in later generations (as all gestures in a culture do) and become a standard part of the language itself. At some point, these cues begin to gain additional meaning, or change, as the language changes. For me, it's not hard to imagine that a language based on visual stimuli would develop many more gestures than one based on speaking.

[Durakken]

Why would you need vowels? We use vowels because it's physically impossible (or at least really difficult) to speak a word without one. But if they're using a different way of creating their "sounds," then the separation of vowels and consonants is meaningless. After all, every color (in its simplest, "default" form) should be "articulated" the same way, so the distinction is lost anyway.
It'd make more sense to allow any string of colors where one could easily be differentiated from the next, I think

I'm just using the term vowel.
It is the most equivalent term as it is a "pure" color where phonetically vowels are "open" sounds

My first line of thought was simply take the 360 wavelengths we can see and then take the various wavelengths of phonemes and match them up, but I just don't think that is the right way to go about it.

Hypothetically I could just say they use Infrared and Ultra-violet colors and have several more cone types that we can't see... The moment we bring up they can "see" more colors than others it brings up a host of other problems that are impossible to answer.

I think the Bright and pure colors would be the dominant colors while mix colors would come later, just naturally. Do you get what I'm getting at?

This reminds me that Kandinsky had a color theory based on Synaesthesia that directly associated qualities from one to the other I.e. timber and pitch might've been associated with saturation or tone. It's somewhere online I bet.

Yes I know there have been studies into if they match the same colors with the same sounds I'd love to see a list of sound - color - texture links. I know there are links, but not the exacts so I'm trying to somewhat create this off what I can figure out.

True, a fairy's mind may have developed to process visual stimuli well beyond that of a human to cope with conversing by light. I'm not sure of the physiology of your fairies, either, so I can't give definite assistance there.

For me, it seems that a language developed through visual stimuli rather than aural would make use of extra possibilities. I find it hard to believe that two fairies could sit across from one another and simply flash at one another without some movement to enhance meaning. Being a visual language, I'd expect there to be body language/gestures of some sort. Akin to how outlying sounds eventually become normal tokens as languages evolve, I'd expect this to become regularized in later generations (as all gestures in a culture do) and become a standard part of the language itself. At some point, these cues begin to gain additional meaning, or change, as the language changes. For me, it's not hard to imagine that a language based on visual stimuli would develop many more gestures than one based on speaking.

I was thinking dance would work, but then I thought, would that work as say a royal or noble thing? Could you imagine a king suddenly get up and start dancing around? I'm open to it in some form, but I'm just not sure where or how as every suggestion I come up with other than a Human <-> Fairy Language would it really work. I'm not certain about how much the light would obstruct the physical movements too, not even sure how they are going to produce the light.

I think that gesture, stance, and such is important, more so than anything we humans have come up with, but I don't think it would be a codified thing
I think that Fairies would use bright and pure colors as a sign of maturity, especially for males. This would also lead to the Women using less bright colors as a "politeness" if we assume the whole patriarchic style of culture for external and more matriarchic as far as how the culture is ran internally. So Bright bold colors = simple ideas, bravado, maturity, etc, while less bright would be more complex ideas and have a more subtle nature to them, but they have to be visible in where ever they are so they are going to have median colors. That's my thinking for trying to figure out which colors would go where and then also relating them to sound.

For example I think Knife and Ball...if we were to look at it in terms of sound color and texture in all the various languages they'd be similar or you could track why they are slightly different.

[Skomakar'n]

The thought of "allophotes" makes me giggle.

would they not be allochromes ?

That's not as much fun, since it's not a pun on the linguistic term.

[Torco]

but it still sounds like a dinosaur

[shanoxilt]

For some inspiration, watch Scriabin's Prometheus: Poem of Fire.

[mèþru]

I also had an idea of this sort: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BLX ... IOXCI/edit