In France purple is not in the set. We have blue, white, red (obviously), black, yellow, green, gray. No orange, no purple, no brown - we of course know these colors but we would not use them when "dividing" colors into sets.
OP mentioned that English speakers have historically divided the range of colours into: Black, White, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Purple, Brown, Orange and Grey.
When we think about "basic colors", we would not add purple, brown or orange to the set. Grey neither know that I think of it.
The color of the soil. All of the languages with a paucity of dedicated color words can readily describe colors by reference. Orange, pink, and violet are not actual color words either. They've been imported to perform dual duty from their original meaning because they were used frequently enough to describe the color of oranges, pinks, and violets.
I just mean that if brown isn't a common color word there, what do school children etc use to describe that color?
Here in the US, "brown" is difference enough from the other colors that I would struggle to find another word for it. "Dark orange" seems really strange, or "yellowish red" is weird too.
OP mentioned that English speakers have historically divided the range of colours into: Black, White, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Purple, Brown, Orange and Grey.
I read it as some kind of spectrum or "main colors" - it does not list all known colors but a set where the others would more or less fit in. This is also not the visual spectrum because gray or black are not there.
For us in France, this spectrum would list the colors I mentioned and it would be good enough to characterize what colors we have. Brown, pink, orange, ... are not part of them, like gold or silver is not either, or salmon or azur.
This is of course a limiting set and we use on an everyday basis "brown", as much as "orange" or "blue", it is just that it is not, historically or culturally, part of the set of "basic colors".
Since colors are not a physical concept anyway, there is a lot of space for interpretation so I would not be surprised if other countries have other sets of basic colors.
It's like in the US we divide the rainbow into "ROYGBIV" (red orange yellow green blue indigo violet), which was quite different from how I learned it in grade school in another country. But in both situations there are still a variety of other color names in common usage.*
So it's the same there. Maybe "brown" (brun?) is common, but it just wouldn't be used as a broad grouping. Thanks for clarifying.
* After learning the rainbow in one language/culture, we then learned about the spectrum in science class. Only after that did I learn the US divisions, ROYGBIV seemed as arbitrary as any other division. I guess there's many ways to do this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_color#Spectral_color_...
> we then learned about the spectrum in science class
As an ex-PhD in physics, that part always makes me wince. "Color" as a physical concept does not exist, but we still try to say that "blue" is around 400 nm and "red" 700 or so.
In reality "color" is a concept of our mind that is a complicated averaging/interpolation of the brain based on the response of cones in our eye. While the majority of people has more or less the same reaction, it can vary wildly.
This is also the reason why culturally some colours are more or less important.
> Maybe "brown" (brun?) is common
Your comment made me remember a time I was with my children and some of their friends (they were 3 or 4 yo) and they were discussing about colors, including the soil. While "sly" was "blue", the soil was all kinds of things, including a new color "soily" :)
