Talk:Color Naming Rule/@comment-67.167.91.66-20151019221939/@comment-226878-20151104211221

Indeed, Tolkien is the preeminent example of "willing suspension of disbelief" as applied to fictional languages. Despite that Tolkien actually developed a speakable (if fictional) language and most other creators don't bother to think that far ahead, the assumption that this process was or could be involved remains strongly (if not only) due to said's influence. My own fiction takes place on another planet (two, in fact), and I had begun a shortlived attempt to create my own language, but it was not until finding out about Tolkien that I truly understood the concept of "translation via human interest" which in my best summation means fans either outright ignore a work's "holes" or create answers for themselves to fill them.

I do, however, agree that an aspect of the CNR is rather... half-baked. Everything the human eye can see has a color. Unless on drugs, we can't associate sounds, smells, tastes, or physical sensations with color. However, so many things perceptible things can be and so very many of those things just sound ridiculous as names. My favorite example is Mailbox. In the US, the primary color associated with a mailbox would be blue due to the box available on nearly every street corner. Phonebooth too. While American phone booths have never really been brightly-colored, it is a known point of trivia that phone booths in England were red. Orange construction cones. Yellow rubber ducky or hardhat or schoolbus. Green: recycle, starbucks, lantern... Red: Santa Claus. Nowhere in Monty's rules does it say "Don't be an idiot" so names like these are perfectly acceptable in the CNR.