• Question: Do you think that we all see colours differently but call them the same thing because thats what we've been taught?

    Asked by Ally to Anna, Hayley, Iain, Rebecca on 16 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 16 Jun 2015:

      It could actually be true that we all see colours differently. Scientists are not 100% sure about it yet. What we know for sure though is that some people who are colourblind see reds and greens as shades of grey. Also, different languages may classify languages in different ways. In Russian, for example, there are two different words for blue (depending on the shade). An in other languages (for example Korean), there is no distinction between blue and green.

      There is quite an interesting (but very complex) pattern that scientist have found for all the languages of the world:
      1. All languages contain terms for black and white.
      2. If a language contains three terms, then it contains a term for red.
      3. If a language contains four terms, then it contains a term for either green or yellow (but not both).
      4. If a language contains five terms, then it contains terms for both green and yellow.
      5. If a language contains six terms, then it contains a term for blue.
      6. If a language contains seven terms, then it contains a term for brown.
      7. If a language contains eight or more terms, then it contains terms for purple, pink, orange, and/or grey.

      This is called the “colour naming debate”. This video explains this in quite a good way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TtnD4jmCDQ

Comments