The goal of the Minza color system is to represent colors as seen by the people of the Azirian universe (Mizarians, Zireen, and so on) as well as humans. Although it is technically impossible to create a single set of color words that work equally well for all these different kinds of people who perceive colors differently, this goal can be achieved to a limited extent by associating a set of basic "primary" hues with specific wavelengths of visible light. The difficulty of associating Zireen colors with human colors can be imagined by taking a look at the Mizarian color system. Mizarians have only limited color vision; only two dimensions are required to specify any Mizarian color. Basically, instead of hue and saturation (of typical human vision), Mizarian color has only a single dimension of "color warmth". Colors in the red to yellow range of the spectrum are perceived as "warm" (aitpa), while blue and violet are perceived as "cool" (wiekpa). Neutral colors (purple and green) are seen as shades of gray (treshpa). The color of the sky (zieshpa) and the color of leaves (teshpa) are seen as pale or more neutral versions of the basic colors.
Zireen and Sangari have an additional dimension of color compared to humans. While human colors can be more or less represented by combinations of red, green, and blue light (with the exception of some highly saturated colors), Zireen/Sangari color vision has four primary colors. If you think about how difficult it would be to represent human colors with the Mizarian color system, you can get some idea of the complexity of the Zireen/Sangari color system. In the Zireen language Yasaro, the names of the primary colors are rúsu, kàju, vári, and núri. Because these are pure spectral colors, we can associate them with human color names: yellow, turquoise, indigo, and ultraviolet.
But that is just the start of the complexity. The equivalent of hue in the Zireen/Sangari color system can be represented on the surface of a sphere, with the pure spectral hues on a line winding around the sphere like the seam of a baseball. The primary hues can be placed at non-adjacent corners on an inscribed cube. Intermediate spectral hues can be placed on lines drawn on the surface of the sphere from one primary corner to another: nhèňu (green) between rúsu and kàju, kìva (blue) between kàju and vári, lèvi (violet) between vári and núri, and finally sų̀pi (no human equivalent) to close the circle from núri back to rúsu. The remaining corners of the cube can be filled with complementary colors: ję́thi (the complement of ultraviolet) is a color which appears white to humans, číla and tą́vi are combinations of ulraviolet with green and blue, and pàmę (the complement of turquoise) is another unique Zireen color with no human equivalent. The two remaining faces may be considered as the north and south poles of the sphere; they are unique Zireen colors with no single dominant wavelength. On this diagram, the top color is hìŋi, a combination of yellow and indigo, and the one at the bottom is mį̀ru, a combination of turquoise and ultraviolet. These are just the basic hues; Zireen and Sangari languages have many words for intermediate colors, but this is enough to get a feel for the issues involved in color naming.
How can we represent this complexity in Minza, while associating as many words as reasonable with the human and Mizarian color systems? We've seen that the four primary colors of Zireen vision can be associated with yellow, turquoise, indigo, and ultraviolet. Still, it is important to keep in mind that these words are not exact equivalents, since color words refer to perceptions of color, not directly to physical properties of light. Orange light is perceived as the same color as yellow to Zireen and Sangari eyes, while on the other hand, a combination of green and red light in the right proportions is perceived as yellow by humans. But if we stick to pure spectral colors, we can correlate the different colors of Mizarian, Human, and Zireen/Sangari color systems, defining the basic color words in reference to the spectrum.
The basic Minza words for colors in the part of the spectrum visible to humans are based on the color wirds from Lindiga and Nimrína. The main difference is that they have been rearranged to be evenly spaced on a logarithmic scale of wavelength. This allows for extension of the color names in both directions without reference to human vision. The names for the shorter-wavelength colors on the chart are derived from Yasaro: lèvi (which appears as a deep violet color to humans) and núri (which is an invisible wavelength of ultraviolet light). The name of the deep red on the right hand side of the chart is based on the Nimrína word for "maroon".
While this system works well for colors that have a single dominant wavelength, humans can also perceive colors that are combinations of red and blue light. These hues are characterized by the absence of light of intermediate wavelengths (yellow and green), so they can be represented as complementary colors. On the Minza color chart, each of the basic hues visible to humans is associated with a complementary color from the spectrum except for green (tavli); the complementary color of green is defined as magenta (taumi). In a similar way, complementary colors can be defined for the rest of the spectrum.
| wavelength | Minza name | English equivalent | Minza complementary color |
| 740 nm | (infrared) | ||
| 709 nm | |||
| 679 nm | nylni | (deep red) | |
| 650 nm | |||
| 623 nm | ňuxtši | (red) | |
| 596 nm | vezi | (orange) | |
| 571 nm | kirvi | (yellow) | zari (sky blue) |
| 547 nm | tavli | (green) | taumi (magenta) |
| 524 nm | ðuvi | (blue-green) | |
| 501 nm | šilgi | (turquoise) | zafi (pink) |
| 480 nm | lambi | (blue) | tševi (antiblue) |
| 460 nm | kaspi | (indigo) | šømi (antiindigo) |
| 440 nm | nidli | (violet) | |
| 422 nm | |||
| 404 nm | levi | (deep violet) | |
| 387 nm | |||
| 370 nm | nuri | (ultraviolet) | veli (semiwhite) |
This accounts for most of the basic Zireen hues except for hìŋi (yellow + indigo) and mį̀ru (turquoise + ultraviolet). On a spherical representation of Zireen hues, these unique colors can be identified with the north and south poles. The Minza words for these colors are borrowed from Yasaro: xyŋi (yellow + indigo) and myňži (turquoise + ultraviolet).
