This is something interesting I did not know. Do you think if a person doesn't have a name for a certain color that they can even see that color? Russians for example have no word for the English equivalent for "blue"..Is blue "green" to them? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language
Of course they can. There are lots of color-shades that do not have their own name. Yet you can distinguish them, can't you?
Yes..ofcourse I can distinguish "blue" from "green" because for me they are separate colors with their own names. But for someone who has no word for blue, WHAT color are they distinguishing from the color green? For them blue would no more be a different color than dark green would be from light green.
:facepalm: So are you saying that people that never learned a language would be blind? What about animals? They have no language, yet a lot of them see colors. Unless a person is colorblind that person can distinguish all colors regardless of whether he or she knows any or all of their names.
While studying Chinese, I had asked a professor fluent in Chinese whether qing meant blue or green (because I was getting confused in my readings), and he told me that, not only could it mean either blue or green, but that, depending on its use, it can also mean gray or clear! I have read about colors terms in different languages, and it seems a matter of cultural subjectivity. Some cultures only care to distinguish between a few different major colors, where we recognize about a dozen. If society made such distinctions important, then these would also become basic colors. So, it looks like a matter of how the color spectrum is divided by cultural requirements. For example, a culture might think it important to distinguish between crimson, carmine, scarlet and vermilion. However, from Language and Thought Processes
Women have dozens of words for colors. Navajo white, beige, navy blue, ecru, puce, fuchsia... do you men have any idea what those words mean??? Even we men who only have one word for "blue" can tell the difference between light blue and dark blue, or between blue-grey and turquoise. You may not know the name of the color Tuscan red (a very common hue in Arizona architecture so I learned the name for it when I Iived there--in fact for a while I thought it was "Tucson red") but you'd have no trouble distinguishing it from fire engine red. It was recently discovered that many animals have frequency receptors that allow them to see colors up into the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum that are invisible to us. This has some interesting ramifications. We've always wondered how birds can tell a male from a female during mating season, since only a few species are dimorphic. It turns out that a great many of them are dimorphic, but the difference is in ultraviolet tints that we can't see. Bees can tell which flowers are "ripe" with pollen because they have a different ultraviolet coloration. Many sea creatures can also see into the ultraviolet range. I'm not enough of a physicist to know whether ultraviolet light passes through water with less attenuation than "visible" light, making it easier for these animals to find food and spot enemies at lower depths.
Human retinas are sensitive to UV, but our lenses block it. When cataracts are removed and replaced with artificial lenses, some people can see ultraviolet. They also complain that things look too purple.
I think the more colors you learn the more colors you see and in this way changes a persons perceptions . You might be able to see the full color spectrum with out knowing all the colors , but your awareness is heightened when you learn and study color. I call it the red car phenomena. Where as if you buy a red car you will see more red cars on the road . Learned behavior by association. Now a name of something I believe works on an individual in the same manner. I think of it as programing by familiarity . Take your own name for example . You are given a name at birth and as you start to grow you respond to that name . It heightens your awareness when you hear it called out. This heightening of awareness allows you to take in more information by your own focusing powers. Lets think of an example . Consider I am in a group setting talking and I say " Listen to Me " . So now consider we are in the same setting and your name is Bob . Now I say " Bob Listen to Me" Is Bob going to be more inclined to hearing what I say than the rest of the people in the group . You could say this would be a form of selective hearing . Yet I believe selective learning and hearing in it self will govern human activity. Assuming that your activity is connected to the selective thoughts a person has.
This thread seems to be a continuation of the other thread about living inside the boundaries of language . Which I might add I believe we do . This seems to me could even be connected to the thread about earth hour and the heightening of awareness in conservation. If you follow that thread word for word you might get a since of why I think there is a connection . Maybe not and it is just Me . Not a connection , but more evidence that we are controlled by language and propaganda we are bombarded with on a daily bases . Emmos had made a statement on another thread even yet made Me think there is truth to language programing by propaganda. She had said that she thinks the world population should be 500million . Funny think is Alex Jones used that identical number in his example of Rosicrucian propaganda in one world orders . Now I am not a conspiracy theories so I don't prescribe to that type of conspiracy theories . I do think human activity operates in satellite groups of people with agendas. Many conspirator groups that inseminate there propaganda into the general pubic views . Emmos claims she just pulled that number out of a hat and it may be true , or is it Emmos does not know were she got the number , but could it be it was planted in her brain by agendas in conservation. Information triggered by a belief and as the communication is past on by Emmos it is pulled out of the subconscious as a remnant of something that was learned in the past that is held as knowledge excepted as truth by the indoctrination of conservation principles. ( Don't get your panties in a bunch , I believe in conservation ) I am talking about how language dictates actions by selective hearing in association to things we except as truth . How seeming to us we came up with original thought, but perhaps the thought was the same as someone else by learning similar propaganda's and agendas or by the language we hear as time unfolds . Now lets look at the Fox news agenda and use it for an example . The broken Record phenomena we will call it. The statement " There is no end game " it is in reference to slamming our President about war in Libya. Now that is not the point !! The point is how many times the statement was used by so many people . The repeating of the same agenda out line . I can't believe they all sat around and said " Hey lets all repeat the same line and we will be able to trick the world into thinking Obama and the Democratic agenda is false. I believe it was by similarity in belief by the use of the same language . Were as the people in that satellite group speak there particular brand of language. Were as they believe in the basic rhetoric of the satellite group and then live in the confines of that very brand of language. My conclusion is " Humans Copy Humans and a good part of the copying is transmitted by language and I got a good feeling it runs deeper than we give credit to.
The question is, rather, how functional that distinguishing is. If you are shown several objects, all in some light tones of blue, and told to pick the baby blue one - will you know? For example, some years back, a kind of mauve/violet/purple (I still don't know which) was fashionable. But the next season, another, to my eyes very similar range of tones was fashionable, while the other one obsolete and you were considered wearing out-of-date clothes if you didn't get the mauve/violet/purple tone right. How those fashion-aware people could tell which is which is beyond me, but apparently, they did, and it was of importance to fashion. If one cannot functionally distinguish between colors - ie. knowing them by their names -, then the ability to distinguish them probably isn't of much consequence.
Some colors, however, are so different from each other that it seems likely that they would have separate names in just about all human languages. What we call in English the "Primary colors" come to mind (red, blue, yellow). Leaving all arguments about tint and slight variations in hue out of the question, is it naive of me to believe that every language differentiates these colors? :shrug:
There are words in russian for green and blue: zeeluany == green (Trying to do russian in english sorry) they actually have two words for blue: seenee Gahluvoy
Since purple is my favorite color I've always lamented the fact that it isn't popular. Prince certainly didn't do very much for the cause of making it acceptable for men! I was delighted to buy a model of the new Dyson vacuum cleaner that only comes in purple. I recently had to buy a set of sheets and, as always, I scanned desultorily through the online catalog knowing that I wouldn't find any in that color until... yes! at last! purple sheets! Except now it's called aubergine, the French word for "eggplant." Apparently my color has been rehabilitated and given a fancy-schmantzy new name. The languages that you're likely to encounter will certainly have names for them. These days all of the world's cultures are merging into one global civilization so we are busily assimilating each other's concepts. But if you venture into one of the world's few remaining Paleolithic (hunter-gatherer stone age) or Neolithic (agricultural stone age) pre-citybuilding cultures, you will encounter perspectives on the world, and languages for expressing that perspective, that have undergone far less outside influence. People who live in an area where a certain color is simply rare may not have a word for it even if they do recognize it when they see it. For example, they may call orange "that funny color that's sort of half red and half yellow."
I have a purple lounge at home comprising of many different hues, but I don't have a clue what they are called. Never the less I can still distinguish between carpet, wall, curtain, throw, cushion, and lampshade purples.
You don't need written or spoken language to distinquish subtle shades of color. Color has its own language based on visual wavelengths. This has its own logic based on the cause and effect of color blending. As an analogy, if you spoke only French and assume you need language to think, does that mean that a person whoonly speaks English can't think like you, since he lacks your language. The answer is no, there are many languages. He can still think, but can't use his language to exchange ideas with you. Audio language makes it easier to transfer thoughts between people. When I talk to you we both hear the same thing. Visual language is not as easy to transfer since I can't always make sure you see the same thing, at the same angle. But if I speak a word, the same sound will synchronize us. As an example, the hunter has eagle eyes and sees prey far away. He points using body language. Since they are hunting, his friend knows that body language means prey even without words. You try to follow his finger with your eyes, but are not sure, exactly where he is pointing. He sees what he sees, but he can't transfer what he sees to your mind either with the Vulgan mind-meld, or with body language. Next, we add audio language. He says near the brook. You both hear the sound of his voice at the same time, and through language association focus on the brook. He then says on the left side near the big rock. Now you can see what he sees. Language may stop again, since any noise will also synchronize with the animals, who may run away.
Classical Chinese (文言) has qing as blue/green/clear depending on the context. Modern Mandarin has a number of distinct words for each of these. Even in Classical, the context generally makes it so obvious as to not be confusing at all, and a proper scholar of Classical Chinese (that is, any educated person in pre-modern China) would not even see clear-qing as the same character as green-qing, though they are written the exact same. It's sort of how you don't view 'flight' and 'a flight' as really the same, the context gives it away far too easily to consider them 'the same word'.
