But according to that cite, carrots became orange because of (Dutch) patriotism. Patriotism involved Orangeness because of William of Orange. William became Orange because of a mispronunciation of a place name that sounded like “orange”.
Actually, “ao” still means both blue and green. The green light on a traffic light has always been referred as “ao”. Green vegetables and green (unripe) fruits are referred to as “ao.” Japanese word for “caterpillar” is “ao mushi.”
So synthesizing from a variety of posts and links …
Cultures develop more color words when a greater variety of color concepts and distinctions have greater salience to them, such when they develop a dye for the color, as happened with “blue” in both Egyptian and Mayan cultures. Such generally happens with greater technologic development. “Blue” is not a discrimination of much importance in less technologically advanced civilization. But maybe that does not quite fly because “Egyptian Blue” was known and used in Ancient Greece: “Egyptian Blue has been found in numerous Greek and Roman objects, including statues from the Parthenon in Athens and wall paintings in Pompeii.” Maybe just not important enough.
The degree (if any) that cultural salience impacted color discrimination ability is not so settled. Cecil cites an 1880 study that demonstrated that there was an ability to discriminate between colors in members of cultures without the word color distinctions but that means little unless we know the samples used. The study referenced in several cites including above seems more meaningful: blue/green discrimination was difficult for members of a hunter-gatherer tribe yet discrimination between shades of green that look pretty identical to me was no problem. I see this as the same thing that occurs with discrimination of phonemes. There are sounds in other languages that I cannot tell the difference between and I am not alone. It is a real physical difference. Unless you learn to make the distinction early on you likely never will be able to, at least within the context of speech. Salience to that discrimination early on changes the brain wiring. The Japanese /r/ - /l/ example is most famous perhaps but it occurs and has been studies in other languages as well.
Apparently there are more studies that support that the Whorf hypothesis, that language impacts perception, is, at least in regard to color, somewhat correct.
When they went to a group with no word for “blue” and asked what color the sky was, there was an interesting progression of responses. Going from memory, they included—
You mean the sun? No. You mean the clouds? No. Then what are you talking about? There’s nothing up there in the direction you’re pointing.
It has no color.
It’s white.
Over time they found that they could introduce the concept of “blue” and that people could gradually learn to recognize it.
This honestly sounds like more of a semantic/communication issue than a lack of a designation for one of the strongest hues in a primitive person’s world. (Fine, they thought it was green or dark or light or ooglawackian, and didn’t get "blue.) But they were Sooooooo Primitive (How Primitive Were They?) that they didn’t “see” the sky? I’m having trouble with that one.
That’s not true. There’s a clear cultural discontinuity between the Jomon and Yayoi periods, indicating the influx of at least one, possibly two, mainland agricultural cultures.
This has nothing to do with being “primitive.” It has to do with how people of a certain group interact with the world around them. If the sky is not a “thing” but rather just the absence of things, then it’s perfectly logical. If I point to a space in the air two feet in front of your nose and ask you what color “that” is, what would you say?
As for “one of the strongest hues in a primitive person’s world,” the whole point of interest in color names is that there is no natural border between one hue and another.
Yes, it is partially semantics, but the point about color terms is that there are several factors here, including:
(1) The environment and culture influence the need for specific color terms
(2) The color terms in a language affect human perception of whether two colors are variations of the same color or are different colors
(3) More generally, language interacts with thoughts and perceptions. Our eyes don’t “see” absolutely everything in our environment, but only what our brains have been taught are things to be seen.
It’s a kind of feedback loop. And there’s no reason why it’s unbelievable that certain light shades of blue might cross over into “white” territory for a particular language/social group. It’s not that if you put a sky blue swatch and a paper white swatch next each other that they won’t be able to see a difference.
It’s that the two might just be considered variations of a single overarching color, the same way that some greys, greens, and blues are under the same umbrella in the Welsh language.
That’s what always bugs me about Hollywood depictions of Ancient Rome and Greece, all the statues having no color at all as if that’s how they originally looked. The BBC series on Rome was the only one I recall getting it right.
No idea, when one of us lacks the word for “the space two feet in front of your nose.”
As I am questioning whether the interviewer knew how to communicate “sky” to the people he was investigating. That the confusion may not have been over a color designator, but over the object being (mis)designated. The only reason “primitive” comes into it is because a culture living far more in the outdoors and dependent on weather and climate would certainly have SOME designation for the vastness above them that produced rain and wind and warmth and light. I suggest it’s more likely that the interviewer didn’t know the designation than that the people/s didn’t have a color word for it.
God knows the interlinguistic record is full of such lacunae and ridiculous fallout therefrom.
