French color denotations of shades of yellow and their correspondences in the Russian language

Zhabo Natallia Ivanovna ORCID: 0000-0003-2958-5738 PhD in Philology Associate Professor; Department of Foreign Languages, Institute of Medicine; Peoples' Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba 107119, Russia, Moscow, Baikalskaya str., 18k2, sq. 114 zhabo_ni@pfur.ru

Avdonina Marina YUrievna ORCID: 0000-0003-3819-8254 PhD in Psychology Associate Professor; Faculty of Distance Learning; Moscow State Linguistic University 107119, Russia, Moscow, Baikalskaya str., 18k2, sq. 114 mavdonina@yandex.ru

The color system is an important element of the human worldview.

The main amount of research on color values is devoted to basic colors. The authors of ethnopsycholinguistic works study the specifics of linguistic conceptualization in each individual linguistic culture, in the history of culture. Let us recall Le mouvement des Gilets jaunes (The Yellow Vest Movement), specific to French culture, in which reflective yellow vests were given the meaning of a symbol of discontent; Mars Jaune (Yellow March) is the month of the fight against endometriosis, where yellow symbolizes light, warmth and renewal, resonating with women fighting the disease; Le maillot jaune – the yellow jersey of the leader in the bike ride in France; Le nain jaune is a yellow dwarf, a kind of family board game.

The differentiation of shades and the ability of their lexical design is based on the system of visual information processing by the human brain as a species, on the individual characteristics of visual perception and on the linguistic and cultural traditions of a particular era. Color is part of a person's emotional states, and associations based on color perception introduce a complex of national and cultural specifics of speech behavior into individual consciousness.

Methods: semantic analysis, stylistic analysis, cultural analysis, comparative analysis of French-Russian equivalents.

Materials: dictionary entries of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, specialized websites, media texts and advertising materials of the 2020s, artistic texts.

The theoretical and methodological basis was the works of domestic and foreign linguists in the field of the theory of color designation, the lexicology of the French language, and linguoculturology, such as M. Pastoureau ^[1] (Pastoureau M. Jaune. Histoire dune couleur. Paris. Edition Seuil, 2019), A. Mollard-Desfour ^[2], M. Deribere ^[3], V. G. Kulpina ^[4], N. B. Bakhilina ^[5], T. S. Ananyina ^[6], E. Y. Vorobyeva ^[7], I. V. Perokhodko ^[8], A.V. Urazmetova and N. I. Ryabtsova ^[9], S. Berne ^[10].

The perception of color as a feature of an object has a common physiological nature, uniting the human race: the physical signal of certain parameters of the electromagnetic radiation wave entering the range visible to humans is transformed on the retina into a physiological signal and processed by the human brain, of which it is a part. The 1981 Nobel Prize was awarded to the research of David Hubel ^[11] and Thorsten Wiesel (who celebrated his centenary in 2024). information processing in the visual system and the transition from detector neurons to complex and, further, hypercomplex neurons. Difficulties in categorization are, for example, the boundary part of the waves of the spectrum between yellow and green: the French see jaune tilleul as a shade of yellow, and in bilingual dictionaries this phrase translates as "pale green" (https://www.multitran.com/tilleul&l2 ).

At this stage, the signal is interpreted, both individually and socioculturally, based on a person's belonging to a particular culture, epoch, nature, religion, etc.

The mediatization of modern society ^{[12; 13]} in lexicological terms leads to the fact that it is the media texts available to the general consumer that reflect changes in tastes and form the aesthetic perception of the world in the French culture of our time, which determines the relevance of our research.

List of shades of yellow in French

The first step of the research was to compile a list of shades of yellow in the French language and conduct a semantic analysis of the terms found. We used the Jaune dictionary entry of the National Center for Textual and Lexical Resources (CNRTL) ^[14]; the online version of the Robert dictionary, the Larousse synonym dictionary ^[15], in which the list of synonyms for the word "jaune" was short: "citron, doré, fauve, ocre, ocré, or, paille, safran, serin, topaze. – Littéraire : cuivré / ‘lemon, golden, fawn, ochre, ochre, golden, straw, saffron, canary, topaz. – Literary: copper'". (Hereafter our translation is N. J. and M. A.), as well as data from Michel Pastoureau's work "Yellow: The History of Color" ^[1], articles by Annie Mollard-Defour ^[2] and tables of shades of various companies offering their analysis of the semantics and symbolism of color, among which we note a set of French Pantone shades (www.pantone.com ), translated into Russian, in which our attention was drawn to the list of colors of the year, namely the color of 2009 "mimosa" and 2021 – a combination of the grayest (Ultimate Grey) and luminous yellow (Illuminating). Let's add that Pantone did not offer such bright colors anymore, in 2025 the coffee-chocolate-brown Mocha Mousse became the color of the year.

The list of shades in the Internet resource fr.wiktionary [Couleurs jaunes en français] offers 97 articles. According to the criterion of the absence of shade in the texts of the XXI century, the following nominations were excluded: couleur du papier bulle ‘the color of wrapping paper’, jaune de Mars ‘yellow like the planet Mars’, flavor ‘yellow’, orpin de Perse ‘auripigment (arsenic ore)’jaune gomme-gutte‘gummigut color’, tabac d'Espagne (the name of the pearl butterfly), nankin ‘light yellow, Chinese’, louvet (this is the color of wolf hair; if we talk about the color of a horse, that is, black and yellow hair).

Some of them are archaisms in French terminology: jaune de chrome = chromate de plomb, but they have been preserved in Russian terminology: "polygr. chrome yellow." The part designates undesirable shades, according to the authors of the article: platine ‘platinum’, or blanc ‘white gold’, or vert ‘green gold’, or gris ‘gray gold’ (very fashionable in the 1930s), lichen ‘lichen’, topaze - the French abandoned this designation, so how topaz can be pink, blue, etc.

The list also includes mixed shades of gris-jaunâtre, vert-jaune, jaune-brun ‘yellowish-gray, yellow-green, yellow-brown'.

To this list should be added the ancient names of paints for tapestries, which are still in use and have the explanation "for dyers" in their names, namely: Camomille des teinturiers (Anthemis tinctoria) chamomile dye, Gen et des teinturiers (Genista tinctoria) drok dye; Sarrette des teinturiers (Serratula tinctoria) serpukha the dyeing plant (https://www.meublepeint.com/jaunes.htm ).

An Internet search helped to add other shades of yellow used in the language of the 21st century ^{[20; 21]}.

Structurally, French names of shades differ from Russian ones due to the different structures of the languages.

It was found that the basic tone is explicitly verbalized in most of the nominations, for example, le jaune bl é ‘wheat’, le jaune olive ‘olive-yellow'. The name of the primary color is usually placed in the initial position to establish a hyper-/hyponymic relationship.

Shades reveal oppositional features and stand in binary opposition of subtones: jaune vif / jaune terne, jaune clair / jaune foncé, jaune pâle / jaune saturé, jaune criard / jaune tendre, jaune sombre / jaune pastel – and have the equivalent of the same elements with clarifying function in Russian, but as part of a complex word. basic tones: bright / dull, light / dark, pale / juicy, tender / flashy ^[16], dull / pastel + yellow. This is convenient, generalizes the gamut, and is a distinctive feature of French color designations. We believe that this shape is a hidden comparison of le jaune queue de serin ‘yellow as a canary's tail'.

Both Russian and French have explicit comparisons, for example: yellow as a lemon – jaune comme un citron = jaune comme un coing (like a quince).

In some cases, the shade is put first, for example, l'ocre jaune, that is, the word jaune is an adjective here, and sometimes the syntactic binding (with the preposition de) is preserved: le jaune d'or ‘golden yellow’ In Russian, the word formation of color meanings, on the contrary, requires putting the primary color in second place, for example: lemon yellow, pale yellow. Advertising is not satisfied with the already familiar color designations. The modern description of designer shades is characterized by the use of a whole system of color nuances, for example: "Le Citron Ensoleillé est une couleur puissante, chargée de soleil, elle égaiera votre intérieur" (https://www.peinture-algo.fr /) 'Sunny Lemon is a powerful, sunny color, it will brighten your interior.' As can be seen from this example, Russian translations of such texts often use English expressions.

Nowadays, language names have given way to codes, for example, the name le jaune de cadmium citron ‘lemon cadmium yellow’ corresponds to the group of codes 156, 307, 545 and 086; 240 le jaune citron ‘lemon yellow', 347 nuance de jaune citron ‘lemon yellow shade'; 171 le jaune japonais citron ‘Japanese lemon yellow'; le ton jaune de cadmium citron ‘cadmium lemon yellow tone'; more expensive shades: 535 jaune de cadmium citron véritable ‘real yellow cadmium lemon'; 254 jaune citron permanent ‘persistent lemon yellow’; 722 jaune citron Winsor ‘Winsor lemon yellow'. And Citron Frappé et Sorbet Citron – 'Lemon frappe and Lemon Sorbet' (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaune_ citron).

S. Berne ^[10], hierarchized the main ways of forming shades of color as follows:

· conversion rate: jaune vanille ‘vanilla', jaune crème ‘creamy’,

· la composition: jaune Renaissance;

· phrases (l'assemblage syntaxiforme): jaune de cobalt cobalt yellow’, jaune vénitien ‘Venetian yellow'.

Monolex units are rare: pisseux, adj. ‘urine colors', citrin, adj. ‘lemon’, cireux, adj. ‘wax colors', blonde, adj. 'light', fauve 'wild color', reddish. Note that the Russian equivalents ignore the shade designations, for example: mangouste fauve (Cynictis penicillata) yellow mongoose.

The French language is especially characterized by complex color designations with a complex structure, for example: le jaune beurre frais ‘the color of fresh butter’; le jaune feuille-morte ‘the dark yellow color of dried leaves'.

The second step was to conduct a semantic analysis of the shades.

Derivatives of the jaun-base (Indo-European, the same root as yellow-): couleur jaunie 'yellowed color'; jaunâtre 'yellowish' (in Russian terms, they usually simplify to "yellow" or use a Greek term, for example, honey plaques jaunâtres "yellow plaques on the skin of the upper eyelids" = "xanthoma"; or they change the color: food. "eau mère jaunâtre" - "white outflow"); blanc jaunâtre 'yellowish-white', jaunet 'yellowish'. The verb jaunir belongs to a subgroup of symmetrical verbs: le papier jaunit sous le soleil / le soleil jaunit le papier. Due to homonymic repulsion, these meanings differ grammatically in Russian: paper turns yellow in the sun / sunlight turns paper yellow. Jaunisse disease (icterus, jaundice) in the field of agriculture has an equivalent term-Greek, for example: jaunisse de la vigne – chlorosis of grapes. In the Russian term, it is a shade of green.

Associations of shades of yellow are mostly mundane, substantive:

1) Minerals and chemicals, pigments: ambre ‘amber‘, cireux 'wax', jaune soufre = fleur de soufre ‘sulfur', jaune d'or ‘golden yellow’, jaune de chrome, jaune de cobalt, ocre / ocré ‘ochre‘, orpiment'auripigment, arsenic sulfide (as₂s₃)’, sable ‘sand', jaune impérial 'imperial yellow', jaune indien 'Indian yellow'. The name le jaune auréolin (= jaune de cobalt) ‘aureolin' from the Latin word aurum ‘gold’, as well as the bright golden-yellow pigment with luster, was created in the 19th century by French chemist Nicolas Jacques Milard (https://krasniykarandash.ru /).

2) Plants and their parts: bouton d'or ‘buttercup‘, citron 'lemon', jonquille ‘yellow narcissus', mimos a ‘mimosa‘, tilleul 'linden‘, bl é 'wheat, bread’, paille ‘straw‘, filasse 'like wool, like tow', for example:

"Rideau de cheveux blonde filasse [...] Kurt Cobain aimantait tous les regards" / 'With his tow-colored blond hair hanging down [...] Kurt Cobain attracted all eyes to himself' (08/05/2024, https://www.letemps.ch /).

3) Animals: canari = serin 'canary, canary', queue de serin 'canary's tail', chamois 'chamois', pussi n'chicken of the first days', queue-de-vache 'cow's tail'; isabelle 'isabelle' (the old name of the suit (robe) of horses "buff", "solovaya" – grayish-yellow-orange shades); caca d'oie 'goose droppings'. For example:

"Réalisant que la teinte "imperator" de leur ouvrage avait, lors d'un ravalement, été transformée en une teinte plus claire dite "caca d'oie", Jérôme Delaage et Fernand Tsaropoulos ont assigné en justice l'architecte en charge des travaux."/ 'Realizing that the "imperial" color of their building When the repainting was replaced with a lighter color called "goose droppings color," Jerome Delange and Fernand Tsaropoulos sued the architect responsible for the work. (https://www.lemoniteur.fr/article/976929)

4) Food products: pineapple, jus d'ananas ‘pineapple, pineapple juice’, banane ‘banana', beurre‘butter’, beurre frais ’fresh butter’, bière ‘beer‘, citrin 'lemon’, citron ‘lemon', cr?me ‘cream’, champagne ‘champagne’, miel ‘honey', moutarde ‘mustard', lime ‘lime’, ma s‘corn’, le jaune d'uf ‘egg yolk‘, safran 'saffron', vanille ‘vanilla'. Note that the colors of the tea in the cup are not reflected in French.

5) Evaluative phrases, figurative names that do not express the color properties of the shade:

isabelle (horse color) ‘buff; nightingale’;

le jaune de Naple s 'Neapolitan yellow' (spoken as "Neapolitan yellow") these are different shades, from sulfur yellow to pinkish yellow, ores from Vesuvius tuff, then the dye was obtained artificially.;

le jaune cocu ‘yellow cuckold' is a metaphor for condemning a color that the speaker considers ugly. In English, this meaning is expressed explicitly: ugly yellow.

The writer J. K. Huysmans in his novel "On the Contrary" (Huysmans. A Rebours, Translated from French by E. L. Kassirova, 1995) created numerous original shade names, which the translator had to work hard on. It was necessary to convey the symbolic and expressive functions of color, to express emotions and individual associations, for example:

– "ciel en boue jaune" (literally "the sky of yellow mud"), in artistic translation: "dirty yellow skies";

– "Pour imiter le badigeon de l'ocre, le jaune administratif et cléricale, il fit tendre ses murs en soie safran" – "To fake a bedroom for an ordinary church room with yellow ochre walls and brown plinths and baseboards, he covered the walls with saffron silk";

– !… ces Anglais […] étaient vêtus de cheviote grise, réglée de jaune nankin et de rose de papier buvard» – «!... the British [...] were dressed in a grey chevy with a scabby yellow or pale pink sparkle."

The third step was a quantitative study of the use of shades of yellow in online sources. Here are the number of Internet users for April 2023: le jaune d'or (46,300,000), le jaune citron (28,900,000), le jaune banane (22,700,000), le jaune beurre frais (11,500,000), le jaune safran (5,690,000), le jaune clair (2,050,000), le jaune moutarde (1,800,000), le jaune pâle (1,370,000), le jaune paille (535,000), le jaune ambré (150,000), le jaune vanillé (71,700).

Let's add that if in the definition of basic yellow it is compared with egg yolk, then in nuances it is lemon that is most important, having at least ten shades for designers (couleurs pour artistes).

Andre Beguin, notes: "...le jaune citron est l'un des premiers tons du jaune si l'on part, comme c'est l'habitude, du plus clair. C'est une teinte claire et acide, froide et fuyante" – 'Lemon yellow is one of the first tones of yellow, if you start, as usual, with the lightest. It is a light and sour shade, cold and fleeting’ [17 p. 169]. In this description, the artist uses synesthesia (lemon taste – lemon color – cold).

When selecting the equivalent, shades were highlighted that were unusual for the Russian set for fashionable clothes and shoes, for painting walls and decorating houses with accessories (lamps, dishes, photo frames, etc.).

Let's look at some of them:

1. Couleur bouton d'or – buttercup color, for example:

«…elle a descendu l’allée vêtue de ce look jaune bouton d’or. (Mina Dragani, 13 mariées célèbres qui n'étaient pas en blanc pour leur mariage,) ‘she went down the alley in her buttercup-colored toilet (Mina Dragani, 13 famous brides who were not in white at their wedding.’

Buttercup is a meadow plant with small bright yellow flowers. But there is no such shade in Russian usage. Therefore, in the texts of fashion magazines, it is sometimes used in a desemanticized form, for example: "Our Buttercup Night dress combines beige and black colors" (https://www.instagram.com/dress_so/p/Cjaq5m2N7CV/?img_index ).

This shade was remembered by all readers of A. Dumas's novel "The Three Musketeers" and became one of the best quotes of the novel. In Chapter 1, D'Artagnan was ridiculed because of the color of his old horse:

«Ce cheval est décidément ou plutôt a été dans sa jeunesse bouton d'or, […]. C'est une couleur fort commune en botanique, mais jusqu'à présent fort rare chez les chevaux».

We assumed that the translation would most likely be done using the primary color. Indeed, the translator did not dare to make a joke and used a neutralization technique: "– This horse is indeed bright yellow, or rather, it once was so [...]. This color, which is very common in the plant world, has rarely been observed in horses until now."

But when buying equipment in Chapter 34, Porthos gets the same horse from his prosecutor. And D'Artagnan screams:

«D’Artagnan poussa un cri de surprise, qui n’était pas exempt d’un mélange de joie.

– Ah ! mon cheval jaune ! s’écria-t-il. Aramis, regardez ce cheval !»

In this case, the translator decided to insert a name of a similar suit.:

"Why, that's my bun stallion! d'Artagnan exclaimed with surprise, mingled with a certain joy." (Bun is a yellowish-sandy color. Shades from almost cream to close to dark bay, dirty yellow-gray-brown tones (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suit_loshady).

2. Le jaune aurore – the color of dawn, the color of dawn, the color of sunrise

This is actually a French color designation, which has no analogues in other languages, but is very fashionable in France. The shade close to saffron comes from Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn. We find five subtones in the palettes: 103 aurore; 761 rose aurore; Fi01 aurore foncé, Fi02 aurore moyen, Fi03 aurore clair (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurore_ (couleur).

3. Le jaune banane - the color of a banana

The simplicity of the "banana" shade is only apparent: in the perception of the French, it is not a rough dull yellow, but a delicate color with a green tint of a young unripe banana.

4. Le jaune maïs – corn

The shade is not easy for native speakers of Russian culture to understand: this is not the bright sunny shade of boiled grains, but on the contrary, "qui est d'un jaune orangé pâle et laiteux, la couleur des grains de maïs crus" 'pale milky orange-yellow, the color of raw corn kernels' - we find on the Canadian government website Vitrine linguistique [Jaune maïs].

5. Couleur jaune poussin – the color of chicken

In French, the meaning of the word "poussin" as a color appeared just over a hundred years ago, in 1919. In finishing paints, this is 217 jaune poussin: "associé au petit poussin, le jaune signifie fraîcheur, dynamisme et douceur" – 'yellow is associated with a small chicken and means freshness, dynamism and softness' (https://www.code-couleur.com/signification/jaune.html #). In Russian dictionaries, the word "chicken" does not have the meaning of "color" ^{[18; 19]}, however, in Internet sources we find uses in this meaning, but only as hair colors with a negative assessment, for example: "I've already lightened up twice at home, but the creepy chicken color at the roots doesn't want to become normal in any way" (https://2gis.ru/omsk/firm/70000001041437906 ).

6. Couleur ventre de giraffe ‘the color of the giraffe's belly', with variants giraffe amoureuse ‘the color of a giraffe in love’, giraffe en exil 'the color of giraffes in exile' – the color of the giraffe's belly, yellow with a reddish tinge, described in the early work of A. J. Greimas ^[20]. This shade of historicism became the most fashionable color in the summer of 1827, when all of Paris came to admire the little giraffe that the Viceroy of Egypt sent to King Charles X for the Paris Botanical Garden in gratitude for the fact that in 1822 Jean-Francois Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone text. This example points to the influence of current events in culture and history on the emergence of new shade color definitions.

7. Blanc jauni – yellowed white

This shade, a slight yellowness in white, adds warmth to rooms where there is little sunlight. It is good in the decor of a rustic house combined with cream and pure white.

8. Caca d'oie – the color of goose droppings

It has a rather bright yellowish-greenish tint. He was remembered by those who read Georges Simenon's work "Maigret and the man on the bench" (Maigret et l'Homme du banc). Reflecting on the reasons for the unusual clothes and shoes of the murdered Louis Touret, his red tie and bright shoes of this shade, the detective remembered his youth, when he dreamed of the same shoes – and solved the murder.

9. Blonde – light

This shade is borrowed from French in many languages as blonde hair color – "fair-haired, blond, blond, light-blond." Nowadays, clarifying names have appeared, such as blonde très clair doré nacré ‘very light pearl-golden blonde’; blonde lin ‘flaxen hair'.

In Russian, "blonde" is a word with limited compatibility, exclusively about hair color, although "blonde" (only in the feminine gender) is a mocking designation for a stupid woman.

This word entered the French language almost a thousand years ago, its origin is controversial among etymologists ^[21]. Its compatibility is wide: les champs blonds is the color of a field with uncut loaves; le sucre de canne blonde is unrefined sugar. In retail names in Russia, le chocolat blonde is translated as "cream chocolate, caramelized white chocolate"; cereal varieties have a different translation: le riz blonde – "brown rice", le quinoa blonde – "cream quinoa". The type of beer la bière blonde has received a stable translation of "light" in the graduated opposition la bière blanche (white beer) / la bière blonde (light beer) / la bière ambrée (semi-dark beer, amber beer) / la bière brune (dark beer) / la bière noire (black beer) (https://www.beertime.fr/). And it is nuanced: la bière blonde dorée ‘light beer of golden hue’

In its substantial form, it is a type of cigarette: fumer des blondes ‘to smoke cigarettes from light tobacco’.

In general, when comparing with French shades, we could not rely on the work of A.P. Vasilevich, S.N. Kuznetsova and S.S. Mishchenko, which is regularly reprinted and contains two thousand shades of the color of the Russian language, since there are few shades of yellow, there is neither "mimosa color" nor "straw". Here are all the shades of yellow from this list, grouped by referent: "yolk, traffic light yellow; ripe ear, millet, ripe ears, ripe rye, old straw; banana; lemon melon, lemon in tea, lemon peel, lemon jelly; pale tea, spiced tea, old tea leaves; yellow-sunny sunset, morning dawn, bright dawn, yellow fog; lime honey, unripe persimmon, fudge, creamy toffee, butter, old amber, bright chicken" ^[22].

Among the 230 two-part derivatives of the word eye that we found in the texts of Internet sites, the press, and magazines ^[23], there are also shades of yellow: yellow-eyed, orange-eyed, red-eyed, amber-eyed, sunny-eyed, sunny-eyed, bronze-eyed, golden-eyed, golden-eyed, copper-eyed, tiger-eyed, for example: "fragile, broken-graceful amber-eyed girl" (anime.kulichki.com/kordeliasm002 ); "Antiquities of the deep / You spread it out in front of me: / Here's a bone, here's a copper-eyed kettle, / It all smells old" (https://stihi.ru/2022/03/12/6118 ). Derivatives from the eye and the eye freely come into combination with inanimate nouns, for example: "The night entered the gate like a yellow-eyed beast" (sharikoff.narod.ru ) Some words have an archaic variant with the formant -polished: golden-eyed, red-eyed. For example: "And the soldier, looking up at the softly shining gray-bearded golden-eyed elder, asked: - And... may I ask?" (Sergey Kruglov, 10-11-2021. The coming hail https://polutona.ru/?show=1110121857 ). The use of such words is ubiquitous. It is important that this list is constantly being updated, forming a systematic unit of vocabulary of the modern Russian language.

Conclusion

In the center of the description of shades is the relationship between the chromatic property and the referent (common name, proper name).

Yellow and its shades are not often used in the French design style, which is characterized by more strict pastel colors.

When describing modern style, media texts use a wider range of color shade definitions than in Russian.

Note that the names of minerals and chemical products, plants and animals, and food products often include shades in French, rather than designations of their primary color. Advertising texts reflect a person's personal preferences, what they do for themselves and their family, and how the French see comfort, home, and personal space.

An analysis of the frequency of use of shades of yellow in French media discourse has shown that saffron, straw yellow, light and pale yellow, amber, mustard are the most relevant in advertising texts and magazines for housewives in 2023-2024, while artistic texts use a significantly larger number of shades that have long been firmly established. into common French.