4 ms·

I'd say it should be rephrased as "could only name a color as categorically distinct from others" to make it more obvious. If you're asked if something is blue

I'd say it should be rephrased as "could only name a color as categorically distinct from others" to make it more obvious. If you're asked if something is blue or red, then turquoise would definitely be described as blue, but green also. It's not that you wouldn't see the difference between sky and grass, it's just that you'd classify it all as a different shades of the same color, as it's closer to it than to say red. On the other hand yellow would probably be a shade of light red in that example. Once you're used to that palette you'd start simply ignoring the differences in shade for practical usages, like for instance Cambridge Blue is called blue, while to me it's really green.

sorokod 7y ago
The article is to a large extent about cause and effect, that the basic assumption is that the cause may be linguistic is odd to me.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  How could it be something other than linguistic? Do you think it's genetic?
  - sorokod 7y ago
    Well, biological.
    - lexicality 7y ago
      You're suggesting koreans may be biologically different enough that they see more shades of green than everyone else?
      - K0SM0S 7y ago
        Perception is trained, whether visual, auditory, etc. It's true that people who live next to the sea/ocean are trained to differentiate shades of blue and green much more than people who live in woody areas — shades of greens and yellows become much more sophisticated in such cases. Musicians tends to isolate sounds and timbers better (e.g. with a noisy background, or identifying precise instruments and effects in complex multi-instrumental pieces). Painters are typically a bunch of good examples of our very subjective color perception.
        enkid 7y ago
        So, language develops due to the environment it is in, which also affects people's perception? That still doesn't sound biological
        cerealbad 7y ago
        human biology adapts to the environment and forms the basic primitive culture. technology for over 10,000 years rapidly mixed cultures and to a lesser extent biologies forming: languages, empires, religions, and ages. the technological process is far more efficient at shaping our cognition than the slower evolutionary one which works through intergenerational selection events. this is a cumulative runaway event which makes sense- given that human intellect is probably a bad mutation for long term fitness and survival, as humans wiped out all of the other humanlike species (and dangerous megafauna) which might have kept us in some ecological niche like the other animals. all living things head towards extinction, but our strategy is to burn up rather than fade away.
        lexicality 7y ago
        Language has nothing to do with biology except in the purest form of it resulting in different meat shapes in your brain. As far as I'm aware, there is absolutely 0 evidence that language can be inherited - anecdotally at least because both my parents can speak French and I can't.
        cerealbad 7y ago
        specific languages are the result of history and territory. Language is an innate human capacity. the speed, breadth and depth of acquisition is measured relative to other humans. less methodical than athletics, art, music or mathematics- which are easier to measure. but definitely not as nebulous as influence, attraction, art or leadership- which are just now becoming measurable with proto artificial brains.
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  It makes sense to me. It matches my experience. I can't think of examples, sorry, but I do know there have been times I've learnt new categories by words (and of course an explanation of where they differed; the semantics of the words), suddenly distinctions became obvious that weren't before. I wish I could recall examples, so this is just a vague statement of 'in my experience' but that linguistic distinction creates categories that allow easier 'recognition' of different concepts I'd lumped together before.
  - sorokod 7y ago
    I think that a relevant example here would be categorizing "red" and " green" to a colour blind person.
    - tempguy9999 7y ago
      I don't think so, as that categorisation can't be perceived by them. Like, they can't see it. I'm saying that once 2 categories had been conceptually distinguished, I could split them apart immediately because the difference had been explain, whereas they were amorphously lumped together in my head before. Typically those categories had different words, but even without that the distinction became evident.
      - kadoban 7y ago
        It's besides the point, but that's actually not how typical red-green colorblindness works. We can see both red and green as separate colors, it's just much harder to distinguish them than it is for other people (especially if they are mixed in with other colors). As far as I understand the physiology, our eyes are much less sensitive to green light, so it just doesn't stand out as much.
        tempguy9999 7y ago
        Very much on point, and I learned something. Ta.
dTal 7y ago
Well I mean, obviously you can't "name a color as distinct" if your language doesn't have a distinct name for it. That doesn't mean it's perceptually indistinguishable. I'm not sure why this tautology is regarded as such a big deal.
- MagnumPIG 7y ago
  It's basically the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which has long since been disproven, but the soft version is still kicking because it's much harder to disprove and part of it is necessarily true (but I think it's mostly tautological). Don't know if that's in the article, sorry if I'm just repeating stuff.
- empath75 7y ago
  Even if you don’t have a different word for green and blue, one could certainly express the idea of a blue that is like a leaf rather than the sky.
  - ryanmaclean 7y ago
    You’d assume so, but this is in fact false. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_la...
    - EdTsft 7y ago
      As far as I can tell all that articles says is that there are languages that use a single term for green/blue, not that speakers of those languages are incapable of identifying the difference between the colour of a leaf and the color of the sky. I can distinguish between the colour of the sky and the colour of blueberries (and treat them as categories of colours) even if I use the same word "blue" for both.
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      That doesn't really support your contention. The color naming debate underlying the entire discussion is primarily focused on basic color terminology, for which colors that are merely allusions to a physical object (e.g., turquoise, gold, lavender) are excluded. But that doesn't tell you what terminology people will actually reach for in description. Japanese, for example, uses "ao" to refer to essentially the entire blue/green spectrum, but "midori" (lit. "leaf") is used to green, increasingly to the exclusion of "ao" in modern Japanese (side note: this is literally an example, explicitly mentioned in your reference, of what the GP is suggesting happens).

sorokod 7y ago

The article is to a large extent about cause and effect, that the basic assumption is that the cause may be linguistic is odd to me.

acollins1331 7y ago
How could it be something other than linguistic? Do you think it's genetic?
- sorokod 7y ago
  Well, biological.
  - lexicality 7y ago
    You're suggesting koreans may be biologically different enough that they see more shades of green than everyone else?
    - K0SM0S 7y ago
      Perception is trained, whether visual, auditory, etc. It's true that people who live next to the sea/ocean are trained to differentiate shades of blue and green much more than people who live in woody areas — shades of greens and yellows become much more sophisticated in such cases. Musicians tends to isolate sounds and timbers better (e.g. with a noisy background, or identifying precise instruments and effects in complex multi-instrumental pieces). Painters are typically a bunch of good examples of our very subjective color perception.
      - enkid 7y ago
        So, language develops due to the environment it is in, which also affects people's perception? That still doesn't sound biological
        cerealbad 7y ago
        human biology adapts to the environment and forms the basic primitive culture. technology for over 10,000 years rapidly mixed cultures and to a lesser extent biologies forming: languages, empires, religions, and ages. the technological process is far more efficient at shaping our cognition than the slower evolutionary one which works through intergenerational selection events. this is a cumulative runaway event which makes sense- given that human intellect is probably a bad mutation for long term fitness and survival, as humans wiped out all of the other humanlike species (and dangerous megafauna) which might have kept us in some ecological niche like the other animals. all living things head towards extinction, but our strategy is to burn up rather than fade away.
        lexicality 7y ago
        Language has nothing to do with biology except in the purest form of it resulting in different meat shapes in your brain. As far as I'm aware, there is absolutely 0 evidence that language can be inherited - anecdotally at least because both my parents can speak French and I can't.
        cerealbad 7y ago
        specific languages are the result of history and territory. Language is an innate human capacity. the speed, breadth and depth of acquisition is measured relative to other humans. less methodical than athletics, art, music or mathematics- which are easier to measure. but definitely not as nebulous as influence, attraction, art or leadership- which are just now becoming measurable with proto artificial brains.
tempguy9999 7y ago
It makes sense to me. It matches my experience. I can't think of examples, sorry, but I do know there have been times I've learnt new categories by words (and of course an explanation of where they differed; the semantics of the words), suddenly distinctions became obvious that weren't before. I wish I could recall examples, so this is just a vague statement of 'in my experience' but that linguistic distinction creates categories that allow easier 'recognition' of different concepts I'd lumped together before.
- sorokod 7y ago
  I think that a relevant example here would be categorizing "red" and " green" to a colour blind person.
  - tempguy9999 7y ago
    I don't think so, as that categorisation can't be perceived by them. Like, they can't see it. I'm saying that once 2 categories had been conceptually distinguished, I could split them apart immediately because the difference had been explain, whereas they were amorphously lumped together in my head before. Typically those categories had different words, but even without that the distinction became evident.
    - kadoban 7y ago
      It's besides the point, but that's actually not how typical red-green colorblindness works. We can see both red and green as separate colors, it's just much harder to distinguish them than it is for other people (especially if they are mixed in with other colors). As far as I understand the physiology, our eyes are much less sensitive to green light, so it just doesn't stand out as much.
      - tempguy9999 7y ago
        Very much on point, and I learned something. Ta.

dTal 7y ago

Well I mean, obviously you can't "name a color as distinct" if your language doesn't have a distinct name for it. That doesn't mean it's perceptually indistinguishable. I'm not sure why this tautology is regarded as such a big deal.

MagnumPIG 7y ago
It's basically the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which has long since been disproven, but the soft version is still kicking because it's much harder to disprove and part of it is necessarily true (but I think it's mostly tautological). Don't know if that's in the article, sorry if I'm just repeating stuff.
empath75 7y ago
Even if you don’t have a different word for green and blue, one could certainly express the idea of a blue that is like a leaf rather than the sky.
- ryanmaclean 7y ago
  You’d assume so, but this is in fact false. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_la...
  - EdTsft 7y ago
    As far as I can tell all that articles says is that there are languages that use a single term for green/blue, not that speakers of those languages are incapable of identifying the difference between the colour of a leaf and the color of the sky. I can distinguish between the colour of the sky and the colour of blueberries (and treat them as categories of colours) even if I use the same word "blue" for both.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    That doesn't really support your contention. The color naming debate underlying the entire discussion is primarily focused on basic color terminology, for which colors that are merely allusions to a physical object (e.g., turquoise, gold, lavender) are excluded. But that doesn't tell you what terminology people will actually reach for in description. Japanese, for example, uses "ao" to refer to essentially the entire blue/green spectrum, but "midori" (lit. "leaf") is used to green, increasingly to the exclusion of "ao" in modern Japanese (side note: this is literally an example, explicitly mentioned in your reference, of what the GP is suggesting happens).