Our ability to distinguish colors depends not only on our vision - this is the conclusion reached by researchers from the University of Lancaster Aina Casaponsa and Panos Athanasopoulos.
The number of words for colors in different languages can vary widely: from just two, as in Bassa, which is spoken in Liberia, to sixteen in Japanese. Linguists also found out that what colors are represented in a language depends on how many words in this language in general are used to denote a color. So, in languages that have only two such words, they will almost always mean black and white (dark and light). If the language has three words, then the third color will be red, and so on for green, yellow and blue.
In addition, what colors we can distinguish depends on what colors are named for in the language we speak. For example, Japanese, Russian, and Greek have different names for light blue and dark blue. When a person who speaks English looks at a sky blue and dark blue T-shirt, he will say: “Look, a pair of blue T-shirts!”, And a Russian-speaking person will not agree with him. And if you spend a lot of time communicating in a language where the number of words for colors is different from your native language, then your perception of color may also change - according to one study, Greeks who spent a long time in the UK no longer distinguish between two shades of blue and began to classify them as one color.
And everything is not limited to T-shirts. Modern Japanese has two different words for blue and green, but ancient Japanese had only one, ao. And this historical connection between green and blue still exists today. For example, traffic lights in Japan use the AO color as a “traffic allowed” signal, and, accordingly, sometimes they turn blue instead of green. In addition, green and blue are represented by the same word in several other languages, such as Vietnamese, Welsh, or Pashto.
It seems that humans, in general, are better at distinguishing between warm colors, such as red and yellow, than cold colors (blue or green). In a 2017 study, psychologists found that, regardless of language or culture, it was easier for people to talk about warm colors than cold ones by having a table with cells of different colors in front of their eyes. The researchers suggested that it is easier for us to talk about warm colors because they are more important to us: "Things that we care about are usually more pleasant and warmer, and unimportant objects are colder." They also suggested that the reason for the emergence of new words to describe colors - industrialization.
After studying the Tsimane tribe, who live in Bolivia on the Amazon River and are engaged in hunting and gathering, researchers found that the natives rarely use color to describe familiar natural objects (for example, an unripe banana), but they use it much more often when describing artificially painted objects. (red cup). Industrialization, scientists hypothesize, increases the language's need for words for color, since the only difference between two identical objects (for example, two plastic circles) may be their color.
Ilya Kislov