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Languages, words for colours, blue/green | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| j0nas Triglot Groupie Norway Joined 5540 days ago 46 posts - 70 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German | Message 1 of 20 20 May 2010 at 11:49am | IP Logged | ||
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I've noticed that quite a few languages (seemingly) do not distinguish between blue and
green. Vietnamese: xanh Welsh: glas Xhosa: luhlaza Does anyone know why? Or maybe is the distinction between blue and green unnecessary? It would also be great if anyone had other "fun facts" about perception of colours in languages. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Wise owl chick Senior Member Ecuador Joined 5316 days ago 122 posts - 137 votes Studies: English | Message 2 of 20 20 May 2010 at 12:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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All the world has a different perception of colour, which depend of the vision, especially the point where two colours change: red/orange, blue/mauve etc. In my family we discovered this because I see the colours differently as the others, for example when my sister and Mum find that a thing is blue, for me it's lilac. This will be for green and blue the same. We have concluded that I see everything lighter or brigter.
I think that the distinction is not unnecessary, but that colours are something percieved by people, and the perceptions are different. Colours have different significances also, in the different countries. I fidn this very interesting, and I love colour, generally. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5462 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 3 of 20 20 May 2010 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Japanese, traffic lights turn blue, not green, even though they are actually exactly
the same colour as those I've seen in any other country. Also, the sun is considered to be red, not yellow, hence the Japanese flag. I suppose it's quite difficult to check this out without causing some serious damage to the eyes though! 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DaisyMaisy Senior Member United States Joined 5378 days ago 115 posts - 178 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 4 of 20 21 May 2010 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, this is new to me! It never occurred to me that other languages would "see" colors any differently. Interesting. Makes you wonder how much of our perception is language/culturally based, without even realizing it.
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 20 21 May 2010 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
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The basic terms will be at least bán ‘white’, dubh ‘black’, dearg ‘red’, buí
‘yellow/orange/light brown’, gorm ‘blue, dark green’, glas ‘non-dark green of plants, dark grey’ and probably liath ‘light grey’. The status of uaithne ‘artificial green’ needs discussion. The colour terms of Irish (by Diarmuid Ó Sé) According to the list of colours at Omniglot, 'glas' is for living things, and 'uaine' for man-made things. I've heard that the musical genre bluegrass got its name from the... "blue" grass of Kentucky. That would probably be 'gorm' in Irish. Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 21 May 2010 at 12:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luhmann Senior Member Brazil Joined 5331 days ago 156 posts - 271 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: Mandarin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Arabic (classical) | Message 6 of 20 21 May 2010 at 12:57am | IP Logged | ||
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_c olor_naming_debate 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5649 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 20 21 May 2010 at 4:17am | IP Logged | ||
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I read Berlin and Kay when it first appeared, so I'm familiar with much of the research on color terms. However, here's a naive observation from my own experience. I live near the ocean. The ocean is always the ocean, of course, day after day. But any patch of ocean can be any of countless shades of green or blue and its color can change almost instantly. If a people started out referring to something as "ocean-colored," "water-colored," or something like that, it would mark out a color territory including both blue and green. There are places where the same argument could be made about vegetation. Perhaps green and blue are just "closer" to our brains or "closer" because of our experiences with vast tracts of landscape that constantly change from "green" to "blue" and back again. Perhaps that same mutability doesn't apply to colors higher in the Berlin and Kay list (black, white, red, yellow).
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| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6470 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 8 of 20 21 May 2010 at 4:28am | IP Logged | ||
It's more of a matter that "blue" and "green" aren't fully distinct in the first place. From what I understand, "midori" (green) is seen more as a shade of "aoi" (blue) than a separate color. Hence, "midori" can be called "aoi" but not necessarily vice versa. Compare "blue" and "cyan" in English. Also, I'm fairly sure I've seen at least one photo of a Japanese traffic light that showed a bluish rather than a greenish light, but I'm sure they refer to the light as "aoi" no matter what shade it is. Incidentally, there's one language (Russian? I'm really not sure) that considers "blue" and "cyan" to be completely different colors, not shades of each other. Edited by furrykef on 21 May 2010 at 4:30am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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