Why Japan Has Blue Traffic Lights Instead of Green
Why Japan Has Blue Traffic Lights Instead of Green
Blue traffic lights is what happens when you have one word for two colors.
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
This is what happens when you have one word for two colors.
Not quite. The number of colours itself is language-dependent. Easier shown with an example:
The three gems in the pic are emerald, turquoisite and lapis respectively. How many colours are there?- Japanese (old style) - "one: they're all different shades of 青 ao"
- English - "two: the emerald is green and the other two are blue"
- Russian - "three: they're зелёный zeljonyj, голубой goluboj, and синий sinij respectively"
From Russian PoV, English is the one using "one word for two colours", and Japanese used one for three.
...or at least that's how Japanese did it. The primary colours of a language can change over time - splitting, migrating, or even merging (in rare situations). And that's exactly what happened with Japanese, with 緑 midori changing meaning from "verdure" to "a hue of 青 ao", and then telling the later "GET OFF MY LAWN, I'M NOW A PRIMARY COLOUR!".
For reference, English did the same around the XVI century, with a shade of yellow (more specifically yellow-red). It's now called "orange".
I mean, you really should have words for at least 6 distinct colours, those being red, yellow, blue, green, orange and purple.
Additional words for stuff like brown may be left out, but those six colours should be named.
you really should have words for at least 6 distinct colours, those being red, yellow, blue, green, orange and purple.
Even if those six were the actual primary and secondary colours, it wouldn't be necessary to have a primary word for each. You can refer them by hue, or by referring to some object.
Also, note that the "true" colour wheel (based on our light reception) is more like red, yellow, green, cyan, blue and magenta. (No orange; and purple is kind of far from magenta.) The wheel that you're implying by those six colours is mostly an artistic "distortion" of the 18th century. And yet it isn't cross-linguistically common to take cyan or magenta as "named" colours, they're often seen as hues of blue/green and red/rose/purple respectively.
(Some societies live just fine with three colours - "dark", "light", and "red".)
I'll comment this separately because it refers to a Hacker News comment, and it's a bit of off-topic:
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.
While the comment that this excerpt comes from is mostly accurate, including the core claim, the Greek example is not.
This myth that Ancient Greek considered the sea "wine-coloured" comes from people lacking poetic sensibility misinterpreting excerpts of the Illiad and the Odyssey, where Homer uses the expression οἶνοψ πόντος / oînops póntos "wine-eyed sea". Like this one:
- [Original] νῦν δ᾽ ὧδε ξὺν νηὶ κατήλυθον ἠδ᾽ ἑτάροισιν // πλέων ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον ἐπ᾽ ἀλλοθρόους ἀνθρώπους,
- [1919 English translation] And now have I put in here, as thou seest, with ship and crew, while sailing over the wine-dark sea [SIC - poor translation IMO] to men of strange speech
"Wine-eyed" does not refer to the colour. Homer is calling the sea a drunkard - it's violent, erratic, whimsy, drowsy. Mentes (actually Athena) in this excerpt is highlighting the difficulties of his travels, that involve dealing with barbarians and with a violent sea.
The same applies to other excerpts.