color and linguistic communication 

in most cultures, people used colors especially to characterize emotions and to make them accurate and clear. the language of color developed and has been incorporated into daily phrases. everyone understands the symbolic of the colors, even if people connect colors with different meanings.

red :

red provokes nine times out of ten attention and indicates something important or urgent. the name of red originates from "rudhia" which is a sanskrit word. if you translate rudhia it means "blood". blood is seen as an essential substance. the golden thread is searched for complicated contexts. the same is it with red numbers which lead to an immediate reaction. the acute and intense which is linked to red can, however, switch completely and suddenly people are shown the red card. if someone is really in a desperate state, he perhaps could visit the red light district in his town, where he can find love for sale. red is a scrupulous color and symbolises a fiery and dramatic nature.

blue:

with blue you associate the most contradictory states of mind and meanings. on the one hand blue characterizes the nobility and tradition but on the other hand the misery, the sick and dirty.

in comparison: blue is an elegant color and blue-blooded people have not needed to work physically ( in order to not covering their blue veins with tan ).

"cordon bleu" is a blue ribbon which qualifies highest quality. by way of contrast, people don`t want blow smoke and they also not intend to be blue-eyed. when hearing a sad blues people can actually shed some tears. in germany to be drunk means to be blue. a "blue movie" signifies a juicy hardcore porn movie. therefore blue can have different meanings in the german language.

green :

even green has an ambiguous meaning. initially, green denotes the youth, fresh and immature. usually youth is wet behind the ears. a gosly person has not yet much experience of life. however, green can also be connected to growth, fertility as well as the ensuing wealth.

if somebody has a green thumb, he is associated with the endowment to handle well with flowers, which are thriving particularly well. and maybe you can get somewhere. than you become rich and you will have pots of money. however, if something goes wrong and someone else wins, then we become green with envy - and there are even those unhealthy hues, which are called poison-greens ...

yellow :

in the european language use, the yellow color of the sun is less popular. it is said that yellow was an ugly color and there's an end to it. this intractable prejudice comes from the christian tradition. it is maintained that judas ischariot has worn a yellow coat at the lord`s supper. as a consequence of this, yellow became the color of betrayal and fraud. to have no money and to sell one's ideals cowardly is likewise associated with yellow. in the anglo-american language use the superficial journalism of tabloids is called the "yellow press".

black :

the color black is also punished a lot. you cannot say much good about the color black. but will until doomsday be associated with death, mourning, or with lullaby towns. who has not met before somewhere? about black magic, black masses or has looked at the black side and has worn black cloths for mourning? for sure, people have certainly done moonlighting or people have certainly got illegal earnings.

compromising all these facts we can say that black is conneted to the illegal and the different. the black seed of the family refuses to accept its traditional role. black is not only the color of mourning, but black also allures beyond that saucy erotism and the sexual forbidden. if something very bad is coming up we ( the germans ) intend to say something is black like the coal. when we see something as abhorrent we see the color white as even more tender and innocent.

white:

the color white then embodies our longing for the absolute perfection. white symbolizes the purity, the virgin as well as a blank page. the unknown and unexplored becomes the white colored pages of a map. the white paper documents basically the political bearing of the government to a special question. with white we intend to underscore the clearness and the acceptance but also the sharp- mindedness and the cleverness. when the color white underscores all nuances of purity and represents the strict clearness is this in no way to say this for the color pink.

pink :

the color pink includes some sounds of romance and teenage rave. pink is breezy, light and infatuating. "la vie en rose" is the title of a chanson made by edith piaf. this chanson is about love in spring and about pink-colored clouds. the same effect has pink in "to see things through rose-colored glasses". when a person wears "rose-colored glasses" the person has fallen in love with somebody, the person is also smoochy and a little bit crazy. but to cope with the world the secrets of this color should be plumbed. pink also symbolizes the connivance.

the old romans intended to eat their banquet under a pink-colored baldachin. the confidential information which friends and also couples in love said to themselves were not allowed to get out of the baldachins. that is why the latin term "sub rosae" means to safeguard discreetness.

in general :

we can say that colors play an important role in our culture and they are tight connected to our language use. colors have not only found entrance into idiomatic expressions they are also used to mark countries, places and peoples. for example, nowadays we use the four main colors of the antiquity to distinguish between red, white, yellow and black peoples. sometimes this connection between colors and geography can, however, be elusive or even be misleading.

to set an example, generally it is said the expression of sub-saharan africa but we do not refer ourself to the look of africa but much more to the skin color of the black people who live in africa.

the red sea, the black sea, the white sea or the blue nile, the yellow river some of these names refer to real color phenomena like the huangho, the yellow river which colours itself yellow due to the silt. other names of colors can indirectly indicate historic events or mythlogical meanings.

at all hazards you can find the preference in colloquial language for "colorful" town names. as geographical descriptions they are not allways appropriate. but if you take it into consideration that colors have an effect on the psyche and titillate our phantasy it seems for us very understandable that people like it more to chose a place to live which has a more "colorful" meaning.

therapy of color of karl ryberg mosaik verlag 1992 page 30-34