I don't think you really addressed my example. I'm talking about a difficult case of distinguishing colors, where you don't get to look at them next to each oth

I don't think you really addressed my example. I'm talking about a difficult case of distinguishing colors, where you don't get to look at them next to each other, and hypothesizing that it would help if the colors were described with completely different English words. Yes, if I knew I were being tested on this, I could invent a description to try to remember what K3 looks like. But I don't have to invent anything to recognize the difference between red and orange. But maybe jacobolus is right that this is just an effect of RGB monitors and not of language. These tiles are in the cyan range, which RGB screens don't display faithfully, so maybe the actual difference between the tiles is more obvious when you're looking at them.