Why is it that some languages don’t distinguish between green and blue colour?

JCSon

"In 1976 Paul Kay, a University of California, Berkeley linguistics professor, led a team of researchers in collecting color terms used by 110 different languages around the world. Reexamining these data in 2006, Delwin Lindsey and Angela Brown of Ohio State University, Columbus discovered that most languages in this study do not make a distinction between green and blue. Further, the closer the homeland of a language group is to the equator the less likely they are to distinguish between green and blue. Lindsey suggests as a possible explanation that people in intensely sunny environments, such as open country near the equator, have had their ability to see color altered due to the yellowing of the eye lens caused by excessive ultraviolet radiation." Source: http://anthro.palomar.edu/language/language_5.htm Jun 21 08, 9:45 PM

JCSon

It may also be an artifact of language development and cultural emphasis on distinguishing between two such properties. "It doesn't require too much speculation to think up a scenario to explain this. A few generations back, Kwarandjie must have had a five-colour system, featuring (like Japanese aoi, for example) a colour zəgzəg which covered both green and blue, whose focus was somewhere between the two. As speakers grew more fluent in Arabic, this focus split; they came to see both green and blue. Depending on whether they more frequently heard older speakers refer to, for example, plants or the sky as zəgzəg, they decided it meant one colour or the other, and gave the other colour an Arabic name; but different choices were made in different families. In the coming weeks I hope to gather more evidence on the issue - in particular, to learn whether even older speakers than those examined see a single colour grue or not." Source: http://lughat.blogspot.com/2008/01/colour-vision-and-language-shift.html For instance, in some cultures (particularly in the northern hemisphere) there are many more words to describe different types of snow than there are in English. A person living in the tropics wouldn't need to have as many descriptors, and so the language would not develop as far. Jun 21 08, 9:53 PM

sequoianoir

From what I remember of an episopde of the QI series and Stephen Fry etc., the Ancient Greeks didn't have a word for BLUE - the SKY was BROWN - Well the word they used was BRONZE. This is referenced in the link below regarding the writings of Homer (and whether or not there was something wrong with his sight) SHEEP and the SEA were the colour of WINE He used the adjective CHLOROS (we understand is GREEN) to HONEY and a NIGHTINGALE. Having initially said (ref. QI) that they didn't have BLUE - this article suggests they did. This says KYANOS (equates to the modern day CYAN) is Blue because we associate it with the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli. However Homer described Hector's hais as kyanos !! http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/61 Jun 22 08, 8:29 AM

queproblema

The color blue exists in the tropics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpho_(butterfly) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue-and-yellow_Macaw [Edit -- Zb] Jun 22 08, 10:42 AM