In the post about "double universe" of bilingual speakers, I mentioned that the differences in naming colours have consequences in the way that they're perceived. Today, I would like to develop this issue.
Maybe you've already heared about some cultures that don't make distinction between blue and green. There was an experiment holded in Namibi where speakers of Himba language don't differenciate this two colours. They have been showed some green squares and one blue square. They didn't see the difference. Hard to believe?
What do you see above?
12 green squares, am I right?
According to Himba speakers, there is one in different colour. Which one?
Source: in the link below
And now, can you see the difference?
Neither do I.
Although Himba speakers don't make distinction between "our" green and blue, they are far more sensitive when talking about various shades od green (link).
But let's talk about a langue that is a bit more likely to be heared by european habitants.
Russian.
In most european languages (the same situation in English, Polish and French) there is one umbrella term "blue" which includes dark and light blue. On the other hand, in Russian, we have two individual terms: "goluboy" and "siniy". Because of that* Russian speakers can faster are more precisely say where finishes one colour and starts another. What is more, in their brains we can observe a surprise reaction between two squares of different (for them) colours.
As you might have noticed, at the beginning of this post, I wrote "green" and "blue". Then, after giving you some examples of coulours perception in different cultures, I needed to add the adjectif "our". Because it is all about the perspective.
PS I wrote above that we have "the same situation in English, Polish and French". I've just realised that it's not the same.
In Polish, we say "granatowy" to talk about "navy blue" and "bleu marine" (in French). It would be very interesting to find out if the fact that Polish speakers have a different word to describe a shade of blue for others also changes the perception (Have I just found the topic for my bachelor's dissertation? :P).
* we can always ask if it's "because of that" or "that's because". ;)
Maybe you've already heared about some cultures that don't make distinction between blue and green. There was an experiment holded in Namibi where speakers of Himba language don't differenciate this two colours. They have been showed some green squares and one blue square. They didn't see the difference. Hard to believe?
Source: in the link below
12 green squares, am I right?
According to Himba speakers, there is one in different colour. Which one?
Source: in the link below
Neither do I.
Although Himba speakers don't make distinction between "our" green and blue, they are far more sensitive when talking about various shades od green (link).
But let's talk about a langue that is a bit more likely to be heared by european habitants.
Russian.
In most european languages (the same situation in English, Polish and French) there is one umbrella term "blue" which includes dark and light blue. On the other hand, in Russian, we have two individual terms: "goluboy" and "siniy". Because of that* Russian speakers can faster are more precisely say where finishes one colour and starts another. What is more, in their brains we can observe a surprise reaction between two squares of different (for them) colours.
PS I wrote above that we have "the same situation in English, Polish and French". I've just realised that it's not the same.
In Polish, we say "granatowy" to talk about "navy blue" and "bleu marine" (in French). It would be very interesting to find out if the fact that Polish speakers have a different word to describe a shade of blue for others also changes the perception (Have I just found the topic for my bachelor's dissertation? :P).
* we can always ask if it's "because of that" or "that's because". ;)
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