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The article states that most world languages do not actually make a distinction between blue and green. To me this seems completely foreign, which is an intere
by tikhonj 14y ago
The article states that most world languages do not actually make a distinction between blue and green.
To me this seems completely foreign, which is an interesting insight on how much I take my language for granted. I can't even imagine thinking of blue and green as the same color, just like most Russians can't imagine thinking of синий and голубой as the same color (blue).
While I was brought up in a Russian family (we still speak Russian at home), I went to an English school from the first grade, so for me the difference between синий and голубой is much less ingrained than the difference between blue and green. I think this just shows that while Russian is my first language, English has really become dominant, for better or for worse.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Natsu 14y agoThere's an old study claiming there's actually some logic in how the distinctions progress: "According to Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's 1969 study Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, distinct terms for brown, purple, pink, orange and grey will not emerge in a language until the language has made a distinction between green and blue. In their account of the development of color terms the first terms to emerge are those for white/black (or light/dark), red and green/yellow." See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Universality_and_Evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Unive...