No language has words for all the blues of a wind-churned sea or the greens and golds of a wildflower meadow in late summer. Globally, different languages have divvied up the world of color using their own set of labels, from just a few to dozens.
The question of how humans have done this -- ascribe a finite vocabulary to the multitude of perceivable colors -- has been long studied, and consistent patterns have emerged, even across wildly divergent languages and cultures. Yet slight differences among languages persist, and what is less understood is how the differing communicative needs of local cultures drive those differences. Do some cultures need to talk about certain colors more than others, and how does that shape their language?
In a new study, researchers led by Colin Twomey, [...] and Joshua Plotkin [...] address these questions, developing an algorithm capable of inferring a culture's communicative needs -- the imperative to talk about certain colors -- using previously collected data from 130 diverse languages.
Their findings underscore that, indeed, cultures across the globe differ in their need to communicate about certain colors. Linking almost all languages, however, is an emphasis on communicating about warm colors -- reds and yellows -- that are known to draw the human eye and that correspond with the colors of ripe fruits in primate diets.
"Their results were so astonishing," Plotkin says. "They demanded explanation."
Substantial research followed, some of which suggested that one major reason for the remarkable similarities between languages' color vocabularies came down to physiology.
"Languages differ, cultures differ, but our eyes are the same," says Plotkin.
But another reason for the overarching similarities could be that humans, regardless of what language they speak, are more interested in talking about certain colors than others.
Journal Reference:
Colin R. Twomey, Gareth Roberts, David H. Brainard, et al. What we talk about when we talk about colors [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2109237118)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @01:17PM (1 child)
They have words like mulatto, quadroon, octoroon and melungeon that describe shades of black that most of us can't differentiate.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @03:58PM
God simply refuses to fashion any two things to be precisely identical, which leads to the speculation that some things innately excel other things. Some people simply cannot stop talking about this. Color me
surprisedbored.(Score: 2, Troll) by looorg on Saturday September 25 2021, @02:02PM (10 children)
Vocal cords are the same to. So ...
Cause most of those names are complete bullshit and have nothing to do with the actual colours.
I only do primary (yellow, blue, red) and secondary colours (green, purple, orange). Plus Black and White, depending on if you think they are colours or not, lets not even get into that. Everything else is just combination of the previous with marketing bullshit names that doesn't even deserve any attention.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday September 25 2021, @04:53PM
I didn't see a lot of blues on wind-churned seas, to be honest. An awful lot of white foam, even more dull slate green colors, brown sometimes, and even black. Not so much blue. Blue water is found mostly in shallow waters, on calm days.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VanessaE on Saturday September 25 2021, @06:55PM
Well, I dunno about "marketing bullshit names", but whatever the origin of the words used, there are situations where colors DO need predictable descriptions. That's not to say I'm okay with randomly referring to things like "UPS brown", "Prusa orange", or "Android green". Those are only good for branding purposes, mostly useless in casual conversation.
The best example of useful, reliable definitions that I can think of is in a project I made for Minetest, which adds a stable color API. It uses a set of 24 named hues (which I picked from a larger "reference sheet" that I found in a web search), all of which are generic words like "aqua" or "vermilion". Pair them with words to describe brightness and saturation and you get something meaningful.
I did it because color was a jumbled mess before my project (not to toot my own horn here), and describing colors by RGB, HSV, etc. is simply is not user friendly, especially if your target audience is mostly devoid of geeks. Numeric terms work fine in program code or markup (or in a paint program when a predictable palette is provided), but something like "bright cerulean" makes a lot more sense to your average person than "1DACD6". Ask someone to pick out the red object from a pile, but call it "FF0000" or "0°,100%,100%" or something along those lines, and they wouldn't know what you're talking about.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday September 25 2021, @07:17PM (4 children)
Since there's no brown in your list, I wonder what you call those objects others would call brown.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Saturday September 25 2021, @07:34PM (1 child)
Brown is technically a dark orange or red. Although among the given list of primary colours, it should be violet rather than orange. I.e. additive primaries: Red Green Blue, subtractive primaries: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow.
Oh, and if you want stupid names, look at the choice of car colours in recent years.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Saturday September 25 2021, @07:44PM
Addendum to my post: I initially didn't read the top post carefully enough, so my "violet" remark makes no sense. Anyway, basically the eye has receptors in the R/G/B range, in addition to much finer brightness receptors, and the additive primaries each trigger one receptor, while the subtractive primaries filter out the wavelengths that trigger one receptor.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday September 25 2021, @08:38PM (1 child)
There is always that one stupid exception isn't there? That said in most colour theory brown is a mix of a primary colour and its secondary complementary colours so I could get away with just calling it by one of the combinations that create it ...
blue+orange (which is just red+yellow), red+green(which is blue+yellow), yellow+purple(which is red+blue)
I guess I could just call it shit, cause you just mix all shit together and you'll get something more or less brown. But I guess Brown will just be easier to remember, or it will be a lot easier to say. That said the stupid names was more for all the stupid names they appear to come up with today for colours ... No this isn't Red, it's autumn crimson serenity ...
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday September 25 2021, @10:28PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Sunday September 26 2021, @12:33AM
So I guess Grey and Brown are just marketing BS?!?
I can understand going with the basics and calling Aqua/Cyan a type of blue, or Gold a shade of yellow... But Brown and Grey are quite distinct on their own.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Sunday September 26 2021, @07:31AM (1 child)
That's because you're male. We only get about eight or nine colours, including British Racing Green and Ferrari Red. Women get millions, including things no man has ever heard of, stuff like amaranth (a song by Nightwish) and gamboge (that green mould that grows around bathroom taps) and celadon (some guy in LotR) and skobeloff (the guy who invented the gun sights for the Mosin-Nagant).
At least I think that's what those things are. Mrs. Driverless claims they're colours.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday September 26 2021, @03:02PM
At least someone enjoyed and understood things. People mad and so serious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @04:34PM (1 child)
I'm colorblind, you insensitive clods!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 25 2021, @08:47PM
Colorblind? Isn't there a Pantone* overlay for web pages that tells you what each blotch of color is (not for photos, but for larger colored regions)?
* or any other organized color scheme