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They speak of this as if it was a Japan-only thing. The blue-green distinction is a late feature of most languages. Even Greek and Latin did not have as clear
by mgaunard 3y ago
They speak of this as if it was a Japan-only thing.
The blue-green distinction is a late feature of most languages.
Even Greek and Latin did not have as clear a distinction as we have today.
- the_mitsuhiko 3y ago> They speak of this as if it was a Japan-only thing. Which other countries have blue traffic lights?
- iopq 3y agoIn China, for example, the word for green 綠 is used for the light 綠 is used in Japanese for the color of green tea, but they use 青 for the green light There's also 翠 in Japanese to mean a bright green, which in Chinese also has a blue connotation (based on the color of the kingfisher who dives 淬 to catch fish)
- the_mitsuhiko 3y agoI'm not doubting that multiple languages have that aspect to it, but as far as I know that does not result in blue traffic lights. I have not heard of an instance of a blue traffic light in China to go with your Chinese example.
- iopq 3y agoBecause they use 绿, not 青 so it would not result in blue lights But in Korea they have the same confusion: https://www.dreamstime.com/traffic-lights-road-blue-speed-limit-signs-south-korea-image235489567 https://www.dreamstime.com/traffic-lights-road-blue-speed-li...
- the_mitsuhiko 3y agoTo the best of my knowledge it's different in Korea. As far as I know the call it blue lights but they are green.
- iopq 3y agoThey are not blue, but because the word for blue is also ambiguous they are more like a teal color
- hnfong 3y agoThis discussion is weird, because the Kanji 青 in Japanese was borrowed from classical Chinese (presumably during the Tang dynasty around the 7th to 9th century). So using Chinese as an example of "another language" having green-blue confusion isn't very meaningful since modern Chinese aka Mandarin also inherits pretty much the same 青 albeit popular usage differs somewhat. Yet the fact that there's no blue traffic light in China just hinges on the fact that people don't commonly refer to the "green" in traffic lights as 青 in China (but you could). The word 青 is used to refer to a broad spectrum of green and blue in different contexts, just happens people generally refer to the traffic lights as "綠" instead. And since there's no ambiguity to "綠" there's no confusion of whether the traffic lights should be "green" or "blue", and thus you don't see blue traffic in China (hopefully).
- fenomas 3y agoThe word "ao" in Old Japanese already had the blue/green confusion before the character 青 was borrowed to write it, so if classical Chinese did as well I guess that would be two such languages.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> The word "ao" in Old Japanese already had the blue/green confusion before the character 青 was borrowed to write it What would the evidence for this be? It's clear that the word "ao" does not derive from the Chinese pronunciation of 青. But its meaning could easily have shifted under the influence of the spelling. Do we have a source that writes the word without spelling it 青?
- fenomas 3y agoThis? https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/青#やまと言葉の「あお」 https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/青#やまと言葉の「あお」
- bluGill 3y agoThe US. They are mostly green, but a lot of them have a blue tint for the colorblind. I suspect other countries as well, colorblindness is very common and this is a simple adaptation.
- bigstrat2003 3y agoI wouldn't call "green with a slight blue tint" a blue light, personally. That's still a green light.
- bluGill 3y agoAs someone who has trouble seeing green, often I would call them blue. I don't expect my experience is normal.
- himinlomax 3y agoviridis / caeruleum
- mgaunard 3y agobut those don't exactly map to what we call green and blue today.
- realusername 3y agoThat's the same in Vietnamese as well, it's "xanh" for both. You have to add some extra precision if you really want to differentiate them.
- Taniwha 3y agowhat's interesting is that the chinese characters used for blue and green ended up being backwards between China and Japan
- PinguTS 3y agoHow do you come, that they had no distinction between blue and green? The Greek had no word for blue, which is the reason Homer described the sky with different words. But I never heard that the sky was green-isch. While on the other side the Greek had more similarities between green and yellow.
- psychoslave 3y agohttps://duckduckgo.com/?q=green+sky&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=green+sky&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=im...
- mgaunard 3y agoThe Greek said the sea was green, for example; so did the Romans. The Romans did have a word for blue, but it only applied to the sky.
- adrian_b 3y agoThe Romans used the word "viridis" both for green and for blue-green. Nevertheless, when they wanted to describe more precisely a color, for example when Pliny the Elder had to explain the difference in color between emeralds and beryls, they used expressions like "green like the leaves" or "green like the grass" for green, and "green like the littoral sea" for blue-green.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> The Greek said the sea was green, for example; so did the Romans. This isn't exactly a surprise; they were both heavily involved with the sea. English speakers talk about the sea being blue, but that's not because it is blue by the standards of English speakers. It's because most people don't bother to give any thought to the things they say. If you go look at the sea, it is obviously green.
- icehawk 3y agoWhich sea?
- alberto_ol 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction...
- IshKebab 3y agoYeah and they also don't realise that "one word for two colours" is just nonsensical. All words are descriptions for a continuous range of colours. Oa apparently just covers a particularly huge range. But you could equally say "ha those stupid English people only have one word for lilac and purple. Idiots!"
- NeoTar 3y agoI think the most common real-world example is Russian and Italian, which have a specific word for light-blue which is distinct from the word for blue. I assume this is like how ‘pink’ is a special word for ‘light-red’.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoYou see the same thing in other areas. In Mandarin Chinese, the sounds represented by "si" in English vision or "r" in English virile are the same sound. An English speaker (like speakers of many other languages) would find this ridiculous, but it is true that the two sounds represent either side of a completely arbitrary threshold applied to a continuous phenomenon.
- taway1237 3y agoIt's like in English the sound represented by "ś" in Polish "ściągać" and "sz" in Polish "szumieć" are the same sound (usually written "sh") :).