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Not a linguist. I feel like this is just an issue of imperfect correspondence between the word "blue" in English and "ao" in Japanese. The article explains the

by yznlp 3y ago

Not a linguist. I feel like this is just an issue of imperfect correspondence between the word "blue" in English and "ao" in Japanese. The article explains the historical reason why ao encompasses both blue and green, so I think the concept of semantic field comes into play here. As an analogy, a MacBook is a type of laptop, and laptops, desktops and tablets are all IT devices (for lack of a better word). Apple might have you believe that a MacBook is very different from a laptop and belongs in its own category, but to me I would still lump it under laptops. If I was presented with a MacBook, a desktop and a tablet and was asked to pick out the laptop, then it would be clear to me that the MacBook is the correct choice. Now, midori (green) is a type of ao ("grue"), and ao, kiiro (yellow) and aka (red) are all colours. English speakers argue that green is very different from blue and that they're different colours, but to Japanese speakers ao encompasses midori. If a Japanese speaker was presented with the colours green, yellow and red and was asked to pick out ao (in the context of traffic lights), then it would be clear that green is the correct choice. There are loads of situations where words in two languages seem to directly correspond to each other, but still they are subtly different especially when the nuances of the words are considered.

troad 3y ago
I trained as a linguist and you hit the nail on the head. Word meanings are fuzzy clouds of references and nuances, and every language has slightly different clouds. There is nothing magical about this, despite the recurrent lizard-brain notion that words or names are somehow mystical and intrinsic, and that these differences must somehow be meaningful. Differences are quite common with colour terms - you don’t need to go to Japanese (blue-green) or Ancient Greek (wine dark sea) for this. My own (European) first language draws a slightly different word cloud around the colours pink and purple than English does, for example. One word is only for hot pink, and the other is for purple and non-hot pinks. I assure you I see these colours the same as you do. If I were to use the English word “purple” to refer to more of a pink hue, it would be a mere language interference error, not some mystical Saphir-Whorf insight into the culturally-conditioned operation of my retinas. Words are not perception. This is such a pernicious bit of nonsense, and journalists and writers are especially susceptible to it because it flatters them, in their role as word-smiths. Languages are way more interesting than this pseudo-intellectual mysticism. The Japanese are just as capable of distinguishing blue and green as anyone else, and they use blue traffic lights for the same reason they drive on the left - because it doesn’t actually matter what convention they pick, so long as everyone agrees on it and sticks to it.
- psychoslave 3y ago
  Did you ever tested the Stroop effect in a language, and how it effects depending on the proficiency in that language? Language is certainly not the sole factor of conscious interpretation of all phenomena, stimuli and mechanisms that induce it, but it definitely is a factor with measurable effects. And probably this is a skill where individual feel like the largest degree of freedom — the topic of whether this feeling is a mental illusion or backed on hard-wired physics is a distinct point. Trying to destroy credibility of whole class of people striking them with an anathema like "mysticism" implies forgetting a bit quickly that Descarte’s grand scheme of thought came to live thanks to three dreams, Newton was found of alchemy and Russel dedicated a whole essay specifically to "Mysticism and Logic". > I assure you I see these colours the same as you do. Maybe not if I’m colour blind, right? Now, this is not to promote the extreme other side: I don’t believe in an "absolute relativism" that would allow culture to shape arbitrary anything anyway regardless of any fundamental conditions that enabled human beings to form. But certainly there a whole set of shade between this two poles (and beyond the linear spectrum they induce). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect https://www.cairn.info/qu-est-ce-que-rever--9782749256627-page-84.htm https://www.cairn.info/qu-est-ce-que-rever--9782749256627-pa... https://www.philomag.com/articles/le-reve-de-descartes https://www.philomag.com/articles/le-reve-de-descartes https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25447/25447-h/25447-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25447/25447-h/25447-h.htm
- lewispollard 3y ago
  > it doesn’t actually matter what convention they pick, so long as everyone agrees on it and sticks to it. That would be a good point, if that actually happened, but Japanese traffic lights have a mixture of green for go and blue for go (with most of them being green).
  - skhr0680 3y ago
    Can you tell me the location of an actual blue traffic light in Japan?
    - 3y ago
fenomas 3y ago
> Now, midori (green) is a type of ao ("grue"), and.. It isn't. TFA is vague on this, but in modern usage "ao" just means blue. There are a bunch of set phrases where it refers to various other cool colors, but to a modern listener "ao" on its own isn't a category including all those colors, it just means blue.
- sam_lowry_ 3y ago
  How do you think this happened? By westernization?
  - naniwaduni 3y ago
    Consider: is "red hair" a color you would consider "red" in a generic context? How about "red cabbage"? Are they the same color?
- skhr0680 3y ago
  You’re going to have to define modern usage because words where ao=green are still common in every day language, like seishun or aoba
  - fenomas 3y ago
    In set phrases it can refer to things of various colors, but on its own it means blue. Like if you use it to describe a sweater, people will assume you mean a blue sweater.
    - skhr0680 3y ago
      If those words and others were more obscure I’d agree with your point, but they really are common enough that I think Aoi can mean blue or green in nodern Japanese.
      - fenomas 3y ago
        Obscurity isn't involved. In set phrases like you're talking about, the "ao" is basically a category specifier, not a color specifier. Like aoba means young fresh leaves, not necessarily green ones, and aoyasai doesn't only mean green vegetables, etc. There are lots of set phrases like this, both obscure and common, and the color involved can be anything from white to dark gray. But when ao is used outside of a set phrase, to tell somebody what color you're talking about, it means blue.
vinnyvichy 3y ago
As an sort of counterbalancing aside, there are two common japanese words for red, the slightly less well known to foreigners is the name for the color of the sun on the japanese flag: beni/kurenai (a deeper red). Well Chinese has the parallel kanjis too but as far as I understand it for the Chinese the semantic values are flipped: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-%E8%B5%A4-ch%C3%AC-and-%E7%BA%A2-h%C3%B3ng https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-%E8%B5%...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hangonhn 3y ago
  Chinese has yet another word for red: 彤. It closer to vermillion or what some people might recognize as "Chinese red" that one sees painted on doors and temples.
jrockway 3y ago
I think yellow and amber are a good example of similar confusion in English. According to the NYS driver's manual, traffic lights are yellow and marker lights on vehicles are amber. They both look yellow to me. Doing some research around the Internets, I see people insisting that governments always call traffic lights amber, but that's not true. Either way, nobody knows what "amber" means except people manufacturing lights and people that just looked it up because they're reading a comment about it. But, again, if you ask someone "is the middle traffic light amber?" they'd probably say yes, just like Japanese people will be happy to mark the green light as ao.
sporkland 3y ago
Grue is a fascinating concept and it's much more pervasive than Japanese: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distincti... Especially the fact that it tends to impact the speakers ability to perceive shades of the color.

by yznlp 3y ago

troad 3y ago

I trained as a linguist and you hit the nail on the head. Word meanings are fuzzy clouds of references and nuances, and every language has slightly different clouds. There is nothing magical about this, despite the recurrent lizard-brain notion that words or names are somehow mystical and intrinsic, and that these differences must somehow be meaningful. Differences are quite common with colour terms - you don’t need to go to Japanese (blue-green) or Ancient Greek (wine dark sea) for this. My own (European) first language draws a slightly different word cloud around the colours pink and purple than English does, for example. One word is only for hot pink, and the other is for purple and non-hot pinks. I assure you I see these colours the same as you do. If I were to use the English word “purple” to refer to more of a pink hue, it would be a mere language interference error, not some mystical Saphir-Whorf insight into the culturally-conditioned operation of my retinas. Words are not perception. This is such a pernicious bit of nonsense, and journalists and writers are especially susceptible to it because it flatters them, in their role as word-smiths. Languages are way more interesting than this pseudo-intellectual mysticism. The Japanese are just as capable of distinguishing blue and green as anyone else, and they use blue traffic lights for the same reason they drive on the left - because it doesn’t actually matter what convention they pick, so long as everyone agrees on it and sticks to it.

psychoslave 3y ago
Did you ever tested the Stroop effect in a language, and how it effects depending on the proficiency in that language? Language is certainly not the sole factor of conscious interpretation of all phenomena, stimuli and mechanisms that induce it, but it definitely is a factor with measurable effects. And probably this is a skill where individual feel like the largest degree of freedom — the topic of whether this feeling is a mental illusion or backed on hard-wired physics is a distinct point. Trying to destroy credibility of whole class of people striking them with an anathema like "mysticism" implies forgetting a bit quickly that Descarte’s grand scheme of thought came to live thanks to three dreams, Newton was found of alchemy and Russel dedicated a whole essay specifically to "Mysticism and Logic". > I assure you I see these colours the same as you do. Maybe not if I’m colour blind, right? Now, this is not to promote the extreme other side: I don’t believe in an "absolute relativism" that would allow culture to shape arbitrary anything anyway regardless of any fundamental conditions that enabled human beings to form. But certainly there a whole set of shade between this two poles (and beyond the linear spectrum they induce). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect https://www.cairn.info/qu-est-ce-que-rever--9782749256627-page-84.htm https://www.cairn.info/qu-est-ce-que-rever--9782749256627-pa... https://www.philomag.com/articles/le-reve-de-descartes https://www.philomag.com/articles/le-reve-de-descartes https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25447/25447-h/25447-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25447/25447-h/25447-h.htm
lewispollard 3y ago
> it doesn’t actually matter what convention they pick, so long as everyone agrees on it and sticks to it. That would be a good point, if that actually happened, but Japanese traffic lights have a mixture of green for go and blue for go (with most of them being green).
- skhr0680 3y ago
  Can you tell me the location of an actual blue traffic light in Japan?
  - 3y ago

fenomas 3y ago

> Now, midori (green) is a type of ao ("grue"), and.. It isn't. TFA is vague on this, but in modern usage "ao" just means blue. There are a bunch of set phrases where it refers to various other cool colors, but to a modern listener "ao" on its own isn't a category including all those colors, it just means blue.

sam_lowry_ 3y ago
How do you think this happened? By westernization?
- naniwaduni 3y ago
  Consider: is "red hair" a color you would consider "red" in a generic context? How about "red cabbage"? Are they the same color?
skhr0680 3y ago
You’re going to have to define modern usage because words where ao=green are still common in every day language, like seishun or aoba
- fenomas 3y ago
  In set phrases it can refer to things of various colors, but on its own it means blue. Like if you use it to describe a sweater, people will assume you mean a blue sweater.
  - skhr0680 3y ago
    If those words and others were more obscure I’d agree with your point, but they really are common enough that I think Aoi can mean blue or green in nodern Japanese.
    - fenomas 3y ago
      Obscurity isn't involved. In set phrases like you're talking about, the "ao" is basically a category specifier, not a color specifier. Like aoba means young fresh leaves, not necessarily green ones, and aoyasai doesn't only mean green vegetables, etc. There are lots of set phrases like this, both obscure and common, and the color involved can be anything from white to dark gray. But when ao is used outside of a set phrase, to tell somebody what color you're talking about, it means blue.

vinnyvichy 3y ago

As an sort of counterbalancing aside, there are two common japanese words for red, the slightly less well known to foreigners is the name for the color of the sun on the japanese flag: beni/kurenai (a deeper red). Well Chinese has the parallel kanjis too but as far as I understand it for the Chinese the semantic values are flipped: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-%E8%B5%A4-ch%C3%AC-and-%E7%BA%A2-h%C3%B3ng https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-%E8%B5%...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hangonhn 3y ago
Chinese has yet another word for red: 彤. It closer to vermillion or what some people might recognize as "Chinese red" that one sees painted on doors and temples.

jrockway 3y ago

I think yellow and amber are a good example of similar confusion in English. According to the NYS driver's manual, traffic lights are yellow and marker lights on vehicles are amber. They both look yellow to me. Doing some research around the Internets, I see people insisting that governments always call traffic lights amber, but that's not true. Either way, nobody knows what "amber" means except people manufacturing lights and people that just looked it up because they're reading a comment about it. But, again, if you ask someone "is the middle traffic light amber?" they'd probably say yes, just like Japanese people will be happy to mark the green light as ao.

sporkland 3y ago

Grue is a fascinating concept and it's much more pervasive than Japanese: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distincti... Especially the fact that it tends to impact the speakers ability to perceive shades of the color.