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One of the proposed explanations is that the ancient Greeks didn't have a fully developed mental model of colors and used them more along on a light/dark axis
by bhaak 7y ago
One of the proposed explanations is that the ancient Greeks didn't have a fully developed mental model of colors and used them more along on a light/dark axis than dividing the colors into strictly separate color terms (also remember that bright pure colors weren't a thing).
I can relate to this idea as my memories are not filled with vivid colors. They are also not completely colorless as I remember there being colors but pinpointing what color certain objects had is sometimes difficult if the color was not a significant property of the object.
For example, remembering/picturing that grass is green is not a problem. Or that the sea at the beach was of a vivid blue because this was the memorable impression. But remembering which exact color the dress somebody was wearing had, this might be difficult. I'll remembering that it was a brightly colored dress and therefore will be "seeing" in my mind a bright dress that is colored, but without "seeing" a specific color but also "seeing" it with some excluded colors (like dark gray, brown, jeans blue) that are not bright.
It might be significant that Homer's stories were told for a relatively long time before they were written down. Oral poetry has other requirements than written poetry as you have to keep everything in memory and can't rely on an external source.
- DFHippie 7y agoAnother thing to keep in mind is that until the advent of dyes most things were just their natural color. You don't need a separate word for green if unexpected things are never green. And even if they sometimes are, you can just say that the unexpected thing has the same color as something you expect to be green.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoThere's been a lot of linguistic research into color naming across languages in general, specifically the claim that languages acquire more colors as they evolve, but it remains a controversial topic. Here's a primer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_...