7 ms·
If you are interested in colours and where many originated and became available and used Victoria Finlay has written a great book called Colour
by martyvis 6y ago
If you are interested in colours and where many originated and became available and used Victoria Finlay has written a great book called Colour
- bigmattystyles 6y agoThis Tom Scott video is also great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TtnD4jmCDQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TtnD4jmCDQ It ties languages to color and what they mean respectively, specifically how it can differ depending on the tongue spoken. For instance, in the US, the middle traffic light is called a yellow light whereas in French, it's an orange light. I spent my first few years in France, to this day, those lights are orange to me, even in California.
- andreareina 6y agoIn Japan the go light is called blue. It is bluish, but definitely green to my eyes.
- freddie_mercury 6y agoNothing unique about Japan there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction... "In many languages, the colors described in English as "blue" and "green" are colexified, i.e. expressed using a single cover term." It goes on to list several dozen languages that do it.
- namenotrequired 6y agoBrazilians have both words but also draw the line differently than my European eyes do. The so called "Verde mar" is definitely blue to me and my American colleagues
- thaumasiotes 6y agoAs I commented sidethread, I was disturbed -- as an American growing up in America -- that the language always referred to the sea as blue when, if you look at it with your eyes, it's obviously green. Perhaps the sea is greener near Portugal and Brazil inherited the description, in the same way that Americans inherited the description of a blue sea and never bothered to reevaluate it?
- simplicio 6y agoYea, in Vietnamese, blue is "blue-green like the sea" and green is "blue-green like a leaf", presumably a call-back to before the two colors were linguistically distinguished.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> blue is "blue-green like the sea" Hmm. In contrast, it always bothered me that English idioms referred to the sea as blue when you can go look at it and it's a deep green. (Formative experiences of seeing what color the sea is took place in the Bay Area.)
- simplicio 6y agoInterestingly, trying to figure out what color Homer meant by his commonly used phrase "the wine-dark sea" was one of the things that led people to realize the links between language and color discussed in the article. While the colors of the ocean and wine look pretty different to us, its apparently common in other languages to group them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer)
- alisonkisk 6y agoThe green of an rgb monitor and the "forest" green of photosynthesis are pretty different, and it's kind of weird they are the same in English.
- mywittyname 6y agoThey are the same color, just with different brightness levels. If you make a table with RGB values: #00FF00, #008800, #004400, and #000000, you'll see the "lime" green move more towards a forest green. You're not adding other colors, just reducing the intensity of the color. Blue is pretty similar. The #0000FF blue is pretty different from a nice #000044 navy blue.
- TylerE 6y agoOlder incandescent traffic lights were _really_ green. The newer LED lights are much more blue-tinted.
- DanBC 6y agoIn the UK it was mixed. Different people made the coloured glass lenses, and some of the manufacturers had more blue in the lens. This was an attempt to colour correct the yellow light given off by some incandescent lamps.
- Xixi 6y agoThe way I was taught is that ao (青) covers all shades of blue and green, although depending on context its meaning can be limited to blue. So for instance if both ao (青) and midori (緑) are used to designate sports teams, then the ao (青) team will be the blue team. Due to this ambiguity with the word ao (青) it's in general better to use a more precise word to specify the shade of blue/green, like koniro (紺色) for deep blue, mizuiro (水色) for light blue, midori (緑) for green, etc.
- mark-r 6y agoI've always been confused by the confusion between yellow and orange. I've had people insist that pumpkins are yellow for example. And Yellow Freight (now YRC) has always had an orange logo.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- billfruit 6y agoAlso "Bright Earth : Invention of Colour" by Philip Ball.