Ponjatie i sposoby vyraženija "krasnogo" v kitajskom jazyke [On the concept and methods of naming RED in Chinese]

It is ascertained that the colour term “red” (equally with “black” and “white”) is included into the classic triangle of verbal colour terms and colour symbols of different nations’ rituals and mythology. The very first stem, which stood for “red” in the ancient Chinese language, was chi, meaning “the colour of fire, the colour of sun”. Later there appeared the stem zhu, standing for “bright red”, and dan, having transformed from its’ original meaning “cinnabar”. The quantity of synonyms enlarged due to the development of handicrafts and discovery of dyes. There emerged new colour terms in the “red” group, which the first Chinese dictionary “Erya” subsequently placed according to its’ level of intensity from what could be determined as “orange” today to “purple-red” and even “black”. But chi was still the basic colour term in the red part of spectrum. The term hong, which stands for “red” in the modern Chinese language, originally meant “pink”. The word transformed into the colour term from the noun, which had designated the dyeing plant. Being “non-pure” in Confucianism due to its’ colour, hong had remained as a non-basic colour term up to the Tang dynasty, when it started being often used by the Tang poets. It was at that time, when the semantics of hong expanded. Gradually hong has supplanted chi, zhu and dan and has become the basic colour term in red part of spectrum. Nevertheless, there is a synonymous sequence of the “red” group in the modern Chinese language, where the original stem chi displaces itself towards brown part of spectrum, zhu is an absolute synonym in bright red part of spectrum, dan gravitates towards light red part of spectrum.