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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 c

• 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?
    • roer 3y ago
      I went ahead and geoguessr'd one of the images of a "blue" traffic light, and came to the following: https://maps.app.goo.gl/EjYmH34YC19y3fVt9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/EjYmH34YC19y3fVt9 There is another one to the right as well. They look very blue when turned off, but cyan/green when turned on.
      • deadbeeves 3y ago
        The daylight and the contrast with the trees don't help, either.
      • skhr0680 3y ago
        That color is common in incandescent green traffic lights around the world, not only in Japan. The idea was to use a blue-green lens to make a mostly green light when paired with a yellow lightbulb
  • jamseason 3y ago
    The Japanese specification for the color of traffic lights is certainly written in Japanese. If the specification says the light should have color "ao", then either blue or green or something in between that matches it is OK. That the color region that word encompasses doesn't match that of the English words "green" doesn't really matter, and is not particularly mysterious.
• manxman 3y ago
  [flagged]
• mcpackieh 3y ago
  In English, things that are orange are often called red. Particularly, but not limited to, hair.
  • HNDen21 3y ago
    Wait till you find out what they call a blonde person in Croatia :-)
    • 9991 3y ago
      I'm still waiting.
      • j33zusjuice 3y ago
        They call it blue.
  • crazygringo 3y ago
    And orange juice is actually yellow. Which really blows some people's minds. "Well it's a little bit orange." No it's not, not your regular American bottled or fresh OJ. Straight-up yellow. (Not denying there are varieties that produce more orange-color juice, like tangerines. But that's not what's on 99% of Americans' breakfast tables.)
    • NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
      It's juice of the fruit-called-orange. How is that not orange juice? We don't call apple juice "red juice" or grape juice "purple juice". If there's a language in the world where the color and the fruit aren't the same word, I've yet to learn it.
      • gerad 3y ago
        But we do call it red (and white) wine.
      • marcosdumay 3y ago
• codys 3y ago
  On Purple vs Pink: it seems that might explain Lego's official name for pieces one might call "pink" use "purple" (with various modifiers) instead. https://www.thebrickfan.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/LEGO-Color-Palette-2016.pdf https://www.thebrickfan.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/LEGO-...
• calfuris 3y ago
  Words do seem to have some influence on perception. Specifically, colors appear to be easier to distinguish if they fall within the bounds of separate basic color terms (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0701644104 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0701644104).
  • aaroninsf 3y ago
    I would say appropriately enough this at this level it becomes an issue of semantics, and pragmatics, and specificity, results like this AFAIK are real (have not been found irreproducible, or limited to e.g. Russian), but, what they demonstrate is best understood in the specific terms of their hypothesis and findings—the "risk" or possible alternative being, to extrapolate the "pernicious" lay belief into some strongish Sapir-Whorf "your reality/my reality." I.e. measurably faster performance on discrimination tasks, does not map broadly to "perceives differently." Your phrasing was appropriately nuanced, "influences" is a reasonably lay summary... ...but "Japanese-as-first-language speakers perceive blue and green as differently as e.g. English speakers" is still definitely much more true than the alternative. Personally I was sad to learn strong S-W didn't hold up. It is quite a captivating idea. So too this popular middle ground around color naming. I find it quite interesting the way experiments like this are construed to try to tease apart linguistic, cognitive, and perceptual factors.
• BurningFrog 3y ago
  The "fuzzy clouds" argument is both true and important. But there also are some basic truths about human vision. We only see three "simplified" different colors, red, blue and green, and other nuances are interpolations our brains make. There is infinitely more frequency information in light that we just don't pick up. So I would expect that the primary colors red/blue/green, which are grounded in human physiology, were universally recognized across languages. To the extent they're not, that's confusing.
  • Retric 3y ago
    The color receptors in your eyes don’t actually correspond with red, blue, and green with the same wavelengths being able to trigger multiple receptors. On top of this your retina absorbs more blue light as you age. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell#/media/File:Cone-fundamentals-with-srgb-spectrum.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell#/media/File:Cone-fun... So, defining the separation between Red, Blue, and Green is really fairly arbitrary.
• wolverine876 3y ago
  > Words are not perception. This is such a pernicious bit of nonsense > pseudo-intellectual mysticism The influence of words on perception is backed by a lot of research and expertise, and seems apparent on a concrete level: The words I choose affect others perceptions; people who make their living in persuasion (political leaders, opinion leaders, 'influencers', etc) put great effort into chosing words that will influence perception, and they do it to great success. Why do you think otherwise? What makes you say otherwise? When you say 'pernicious', that implies negative intent - whose intent? (If that's not meant literally, I take back this particular question.)
  • kelvie 3y ago
    I think the original poster is referring to the intent of those that believe in (the strong version of) the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which isn't the scientific consensus (at least it wasn't when I studied linguistics/psychology).
    • mistermann 3y ago
      As a believe in Hard Whorfism, I think this is rather excellent evidence in support of it... > I think the original poster is referring to the intent of those that believe in (the strong version of) the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which isn't the scientific consensus (at least it wasn't when I studied linguistics/psychology). When "is not scientific consensus" is considered abstractly, it DOES NOT equal "is false" (if everyone has adequate background knowledge, and is thinking clearly)...but if you observe people (including actual scientists/linguists) discussing concrete instances that involve these abstract notions, then it "almost always" DOES "equal" "is false"...and, if one is to point out the error, it tends to be not well received (rejected due to "pedantry", or one of 5 or so other memes). Higher in the chain: > 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. Human communication and perception has substantial dependencies on language, and language has a dependency on consciousness, which science does not understand[1] - therefore, pick whatever label you want to attach to this state of affairs, but it is magical/mystical. > I trained as a linguist and you hit the nail on the head. At runtime, this tends to render as: ~I know it to be objectively true that you are objectively correct, because I have the necessary specialized training. > I assure you I see these colours the same as you do At runtime, this tends to render as: ~It is a fact that I see these colours the same as you do. > Words are not perception. This is kinda true - they are (to the degree that they are....which is not known, so the mind conveniently swaps in a simulation, but does not notify us) a fundamental component of perception, but they are not equal to perception - perception has a dependency on words - in general, and on which specific words are used or not) during communication of an idea. > This is such a pernicious bit of nonsense.... ~That which seems like nonsense to me, is(!) nonsense [to everyone]. > ...and journalists and writers are especially susceptible to it because it flatters them, in their role as word-smiths. ~Other people suffer from naive realism and overactive ego, but not me! > Languages are way more interesting than this pseudo-intellectual mysticism. ~My map of what "mysticism" is is identical to what it actually is (roughly: silly and incorrect "woo woo" would be my guess). > 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. This seemingly innocuous claim highlights one of the biggest problems in English, and Western culture: we use the same word (ie; to be) to communicate two ideas with subtle but very importance in meaning: "it is a fact that it is" vs "it is my opinion that it is". And yes, I appreciate that all this "is" "just" "pedantry", but it also plausibly affects the frequency and severity of war and various other suboptimalities in the world, that in other threads people "assure me"[2] "are" ~"a big deal". Well, if these things actually were a big deal, you'd think people would treat them as such. Sadly, I am very confident that there are people in powerful positions (political "public relations") who understand all of what I say here and much more, likely much better than I understand it. [1] Notice how I used "understand" with no qualifying terms? This is deliberate, because I have pre-knowledge that this is a scenario where humans get very confused (and often emotionally motivated, depending on the topic, and consciousness is one of those topics) when performing categorization (much of which is sub-perceptual). A soft whorfist might say: This "is" trolling (because that is how it appears to them, and how things appear is how they "are"). [2] it "is" a fact that
• akhosravian 3y ago
  Thanks for writing this. I cringe every time I see someone drop the phrase “there’s no direct English translation” as if it means there is some unique insight only able to be expressed in that language. Words aren’t isomorphic between languages, but that doesn’t tell us anything about the range of ideas that are available. Surely no one believes a native English speaker only experienced schadenfreude after that word was imported from German?
  • melagonster 3y ago
    but if some word related to specific concept of culture, do these words exist before people understand the culture?
• goodbyesf 3y ago
  > I assure you I see these colours the same as you do. I assure you that you do not. Don't want to get too philosophical or biological on you but we all see colors differently. Every single one of us. Even identical twins.