Colors

Color is the way humans perceive combinations of light rays that come from the same place by their ampitude and their frequency (or wavelength inversely).

Unlike in most languages, in Orish names of colors are not arbitrary, but reflect their optical properties. Humans have 3 types of cones, red green and blue, and each one of them is sensitive to another range of wavelengths (see in the picture). When no one of the is activated humans see it as black, when all of them are activated in a high intensity humans see it as white, when red and green cones are activated equally and in a high intensity and blue cones are not activated very much humans see it as yellow, and so on. Screens of computers and televisions are programmed so that each subpixel can work in 256 levels (0 means not activated at all and 255 means activated in the highest intensity) in order to make them able to show enough colors so that they look realistic enough for humans, but Orish reduces it into 5 levels for each primary color in order to avoid cognitive load, and to include only colors that are not very hard to perceive. Totally, 125 colors can be portrayed in Orish.

In Orish, names of colors are based upon the pattern 1A2Ô3, in which the first consonant represents the red value, the second consonant represents the green value and the third consonant represents the blue value. At the beginning, Or Hoshmand tried to use the same consonants for all primary colors, but it resulted in difficulties in the pronunciation of some colors, especially neutral ones (black, gray and white). To solve the problem, Or Hoshmand decided to use different sets of consonants for each primary color, in which the place of articulation represents the primary color and the sonority represents the value. Basically, the red is represented by the labial place of articulation, green is represented by the alveolar place of articulation, blue is represented by the velar place of articulation and the more sonorous the consonant is the higher value it represents (unvoiced stop = 0, unvoiced fricative = 1, voiced stop = 2, voiced fricative = 3, nasal = 4). However, not all places of articulation are equal, in Orish the velar place of articulation which is supposed the represent the blue primary color is inferior, there is no phonemic voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ and no velar nasal /ŋ/ so following this rule accurately is impossible. To solve this problem, the postalveolar fricatives replaced the velar fricative and the alveolar lateral approximant replaced the velar nasal.

### Examples

* Black = PATÔK
* Gray = BADÔG
* White = MANÔL
* Red = MATÔK
* Green = PANÔK
* Blue = PATÔL
* Yellow = MANÔK
* Cyan = PANÔL
* Magenta = MATÔL
* Orange = MADÔK
* Purple = BATÔL
* Brown = VADÔƩ
* Azure = PADÔL
* Chartreuse = BANÔK
* Pink = MATÔG
* Spring Green = PANÔG

## Spectral Colors

Unlike Isaac Newton, Or Hoshmand doesn't see fit to divide the visible spectrum to 7 colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). In his opinion the problem is that the intetvals between these colors are not equal. In his opinion, the interval between green and blue is way too large, the interval between red and orange (orange and yellow as well) is a little bit too small, and the interval between blue and indigo (indigo and violet as well) is way too small. In his opinion good division of the visible spectrum should have equal intervals between colors. In additionally, the names of the colors are directly related to the RGB theory, and cannot obscure their optical composition. Instead, Or Hoshmand divides the visible spectrum to 3 grades that differ in their minimal intervals: primary (5 colors), secondary (11 colors) and tertiary (23 colors). These intervals are not based upon differences or ratios of wavelengths or frequencies, but upon how the colors look to humans, and the minimal intervals in the RGB system.