this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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We perceive it as a different color because we have a specific name for it. Iirc in Mandarin, it is just called dark orange.
In many languages blue and green are the same word. For example Japanese didn’t have a separate word for green for centuries. Then they started using midori for green. And midori just means sprout and for a long while just meant greenish blue and not a separate distinct color. Like how we use Peach for a shade of Orange.
While Midori means a distinct green nowadays. The non distinction of blue and green from the past can still be seen today. Like green apples are called Ao Ringo which we would translate to blue apples. Or green bamboo is called blue bamboo Aodake.
It’s also why traffic lights in Japan are blueish green. Since in their traffic code they use the word Ao for Go, so blue (but also green) and not Midori. In the beginning the go light was just green as the international traffic code dictates, but some people objected since the traffic code says Ao and not Midori thus they compromised and made it blueish green.
Also young kids often mix up blue and green when they are still learning the colors. Same with red and orange.
On the other hand in Italy you'd be wrong if you call the color of the jersey of the Italian soccer team blue. It's Azzurro (azure) which is a distinct color in Italian, while it's just a shade of blue in most other languages
I can't help but imagine non-colorblind Japanese people scratching their heads, wondering why the fuck leaves were said to have the same color as the sea.
I mean, the sea is hardly the same colour as the sky either (usually) and yet we still call both those blue so it's not all that different. Though I agree that it seems like starker difference to me I can acknowledge that's at least partially my own biases.
We only have a different word for it because of oranges. Prior to that it was just "red."
It would be like if brick-red became so commonly used that people referred to the color as "brick" and people wondered which came first.
linguistics of color is interesting. classic example is russian having distinct words for light and dark blue as well (golubój/sínij respectively) with no generic "blue"
It's been a long time since my Field Methods, class, but I remember that (Central Atlas) Tamazight had some interesting pragmatics because it seemed to have both a nominal and verbal forms for adjectives, including color. We got some cool sayings that pertained to associating color and action.
Alas, it was also a very BAD quality Field Methods class. Our prof couldn't even figure out the region (because of poor elicitation choices) and it turns out the way the elicitation was being done, our consultant gave us SVO instead of the normal VSO 😭 (but still grammatically correct? But infelicitous). But you know, bad profs r a story for another time lol
In english, blue used to be light, and indigo was a different colour. But now blue is dark, and cyan is a different colour
To consider this from other languages’ points of view, English has distinct words for light red (pink) and not-light-red (red) with no generic word that refers to both colors.