Fun fact: The French 'blanc', meaning 'white', ultimately traces back to the same PIE root as the English word 'black'. One took the meaning of brightness out of the fire that burns, the other took the meaning of darkness from the result of the burning.

Just when I thought Bears couldn't get any more badass, now I learn they are basically like some kind of unnamable lovecraftian entity to ancient Europeans.

Pink used to mean a yellow-green color. Pinking is cutting the edge of fabric in a zigzag to prevent fraying. Dianthus flower petals have a zigzag edge and so they were called pink for their shape. As everyone was referring to this light red flower as pink that eventually became the color name.

As someone whose favorite color is orange, geoluhread is an incredibly cool word and it's a pity it fell out of fashion.

"Cyan" should be a universally-used English colour word by now thanks to colour printing. And yet somehow it doesn't seem to be there yet.

You know I’m here for Otherwords

Here in Indonesia, the color pink is usually translated into "merah muda". If you translate "merah muda" word-by-word back into English, you'll get either light red or bright red.

As someone who studied about colours in Linguistics class, you have no idea how excited this makes me 👏🏽

A thing that always stuck out to me about the linguistic color evolution theory was that it seems to closely follow the perception of the three cones of the human eye in ascending order. Red comes first to be described, then the mix of yellow/green (next cone frequency) to distinguish it as the "non-red" color, which splits yet a third time when the third cone (blue) comes into play in the language. This closely follows the pattern of the rods which are most sensitive at 564nm (red), 534nm (green), and finally 420nm (blue). Rods of the eyes, which only detect along the black-white spectrum peak around 498mn, so between the blue and the red/green bunch. It's also worth noting that for each subsequent cone up from red, the less frequent it occurs: 64% for red-sensitivity, ~32% green , ~2% are blue (though cool fast, blue cones peak the furthest away from the red-green bunch and are the most sensitive).

Could you do an episode on what we know about the PIE language itself? I'd be fascinated to learn more about it

I studied in italy in the aughts and while learning italian I was only taught "azzuro" to mean blue. Going back just under nine years later I noticed that "blu" had subplanted azzuro for darker blues making azzuro exclussive to light blues

I think how colors became associated with feelings and moods would be another interesting topic related to this to explore.

In the orange case, it was the same for its color in Arabic, but by another way In Arabic it’s burtaqaly برتقالي from the fruit burtaqal برتقال (the y at the end transforms a noun in an adjective), but this comes from the name Portugal It’s similar to turquoise in English, which comes from the stone, named from Turk/ottoman traders I love this connections

PBS has evolved so far. I love this.

As a designer i have always found the evolution of naming colors fascinating because we of course interact with colors everyday but having to describe or express the color we perceive can be different for everyone based on their culture or background.

So violets are blue because there was no word for purple (violet)

We need a Otherwords show for latin branch languages 😮 I love watching this

You should have mentioned of Cyan and Magenta, because most people consider Cyan a Blue-Green color (like orange used to be yellow-red) or light blue, despite being a color on its own. And Magenta being confused with pink or purple, but also being a color of its own (or actually not a color at all, as it is outside the visible spectrum)

Fun fact!!! In Bangladesh, we call orange 🍊 "Malta" as supposedly it was being imported from the county Malta! We call mandarin 🍊 "orange"(কমলা, sounds like "Komola") and the same word for the color orange 🧡! I was often confusing my friends at french grocery shops in the beginning. I am still not convienced about the "orange" origin story as there are several conflicting videos out there! "নারঙ্গী" (norange) is a word i only found in old literature! No one would understand you if you say that. Oh btw, in Bengali i think the word for color came first as we used to call orange (mandarin 😅) "কমলা-লেবু" which literary translates to "orange lemon/lime"

2:27 So, in fact everything that glitters ís gold…

In the subject of the proliferation of color names: I have a friend who is blind and crochets afghans. Occasionally, she will be searching for yarns online. And she wants me to help her choose a color for the border that will go with the main color. She lost her sight when she was five, and when she comes across names. Like sea turtle or sea grass or candy cane, she has no idea what to think.

Oh how colorful this latest banger of an episode made my day today!

I literally just finished "Through the Language Glass" by Guy Deutscher today! He's mostly convinced me that certain elements of language are very plausibly influenced by culture, and it makes a lot of sense to me. The greater the need to specify the colors of different objects, the greater the need of more color words. The study of language on its own is gratifying in itself, but the intersections with Psychology and Anthropology and even Biology is what makes it to me, such an eminently fascinating subject.

The interesting thing about colour and language is that languages that don't have a word for a color such as pink, have a hard time distinguishing pink from other similar colors.

I’m so happy Dr. Erica mentioned Artist and designer instead of that done to death joke about girls knowing more colours.

As an artist, I love this episode. And thanks for explaining why green to blue have so little names dispirited having vastly more colors then the warms. It is madding to me trying to tell my favorite shades of cool colors.

Psychologically, the way different cultures have divided colors is very interesting. We all see color more or less similarly (unless you're color blind) but have have come up with varying interpretations of what is or isn't certain colors. When a shade should be considered its own separate color and be signified with a separate word or simply get a qualifing adjective.

colours and how we divide them does vary somewhat between cultures. greeks regularly classify orange as a kind of red, and they distinguish galazio (sky blue) from ble (shorter wavelengths of blue: ultramarine, navy blue, indigo). if they need to distinguish, greeks have a word for orange portoka'li, derived from the fruit porto'kali, which comes from "Portugal". japanese has specific words for white, black red, yellow, green, blue and purple. many colours are directly named after things, "peach colour" for pink, "tea colour" for brown, "ash colour" for grey, "orange (fruit) colour" for orange.

I've been watching since this channel was just Monstrum and Otherwords has quickly become my favourite show here

Fun thing : cochineal hides under and produces the white fuzzy stuff you'll sometimes see on cactus

Great video! Thank you! "Unless you're a designer or an artist you only use about ten or so colour words..." Or, unless you've been getting L.L. Bean and Land's End catalogues for decades. If ya know, ya know. 😉

In my native Swedish, we have an alternative word for orange: brandgul. It means ”fire yellow”, but isn’t really used anymore. I remember old people using it when I was a kid some 30 years ago, but everyone just says ”orange” now (pronounced ”oransh”, like the French).

It's so fascinating that the development of colour words kinda mirrors their order by light wavelength! Also 5:10 the ancient word for bear was actually lost quite a while before Old English - 'bear' goes back as far as Proto-Germanic *bero, also the origin of Swedish 'björn', German 'Bär' and so on. The original lost PIE word was *h₂r̥tḱo- (which survived in other IE branches - Latin 'ursus', Greek 'arktos' etc.). Had that word persisted in Germanic, the modern English word for bear could theoretically have been something like 'rax', 'rought', 'arrow', or 'arx' depending on the nuances of the sound changes (I worked that out once cause I'm a nerd)

It’s wild to me that Blue is lower on the color language scale than Green bc I remember when learning Japanese, Blue and Green were often lumped together under Blue (and sometimes even green in traffic lights is called blue). It’s not 100% of the time now bc there is a separate word for green in modern Japanese, but that wasn’t always the case. Very much a guide than a rule!

It's interesting that "blue" is such a late addition to languages as a whole. When I was learning Japanese, I was taught they didn't have a word for green (midori) until fairly recently. Green and blue were lumped together under blue (ao). Apparently, because of this, Japanese people have a harder time distinguishing between green and blue than other cultures. I actually saw an example of this when I did my study abroad in Japan. I was at a crosswalk and overheard a mom asking their child, who looked to be about 3 years old, what color the stoplight was. The child enthusiastically shouted "Aoiro!" (blue color), and the mom said that's right.

y'all never fail to put a smile on my face and interest in my mind, keep up the amazing work!!

Another observation: babies react FIRST to black and white toys, then to colors, in order of red, green and then blue. (This is also affected by what colors they're surrounded by of course, since stimulation plays a huge part in infant development). I'm seeing a comment in here too about the frequency of cones and rods in the eyes, which I think correlates to the brain's development also? So it makes even more sense that early humans, and their language, took on the oldest, clearest, most vital concepts first. But no matter what names they go by, colors are still wonderful!

This was amazing! Always down for a short, fun video from you guys! This one speaks to me simply because I like to "art" in my free time.

As a painting contractor, I can swear people have very little sense of absolute color. What something looks like next to something else matters, as the color balance of the light will vastly affect what it immediately looks like. People picking anything yellow off a paint chip are almost always surprised what it looks like in mass on a wall.

It's a good thing no one remembers the real name for bears. If we ever figure it out, it's gonna be all over. The bears will come for us.

This was fascinating! I love learning about word origins and this colorful expo was super interesting.

I love this series! I learn so much!

Such a wild and diverse history for things that today we consider so simple. I really love this channel!

I'm sure I've said this a bunch of times, but I love the retro opening animation. Takes me back to watching PBS on broadcast TV as a kid.

I love learning all of this!! Keep it coming!

Yay for a new episode.

She's so good. I love how expressive she is. It's fun to watch! Good job!

love this series !

As a Filipino growing up in a city in the southwestern part or area of the Philippines, I rarely heard other Filipinos older than me, even my fellow elementary students or pupils way back when I was still in elementary school, use the word "purple" for any color with a mix of red and blue or any color in between red and blue. I remember that we would just and almost always call or refer to it as "violet", and sometimes if it's more bluish, bluer, or leaning towards blue, then it's "indigo" or even just "blue", and while growing up from elementary school to high school in the mid- to late 2000s to the early to mid-2010s, I remember that I personally can't differentiate a "violet" from a "purple and vice versa, so I just thought they're just the same color and that the latter color is just the fancier name or version of the former color. Later on, I remember that I just thought that "violet" is more bluish or is bluer than "purple" and that "purple" is more reddish or is redder than "violet" but not as more reddish or redder as "maroon" and a "red-violet", and I also remember that I just treated "purple" the same as a bluer "red-violet" or a bluer "maroon", or as a darker, more intense, or more vivid "lavender". Now, "purple" for me is the color "violet" but with a little more red and with a brighter, more intense, or more vivid color.

I love these videos!! Thank you! 😊❤

every time, i learn interesting information about words. thank you for expanding my knowledge and helping me learn more wonderful words.

Now I'm interested in how words of color evolved in my native Finnish. Only orange seems to have any kind of link to English (but is probably loaned from Swedish or German). Also, the bear name is interessting. Do have a similar history for it. Our relationship with them seems to have been quite different. I even have a brick of a tome about old poems about bears, which probably only exists because they had such a strong religious importance to us.

You finally bring back "ACTUALLY" ❤ Love it

I find incredible how something so simple can be so intresting.

Fascinating. I love ❤ this program!

BTW, bears are in slavic languages named with the word being a slightly evolved, literal "honey eater". The original name of course is forgotten. The other name is something that currently is related to diminuitive of "Michael" name (local language form of course), but I don't know if this was the origin. But this is used rather in children context. I mean, when speaking about a teddy bear, not about Ursus Spealeus.

The "G" in Anglo-Saxon is pronounced as essentially a "Y" sound, so the Geoluhread comes out even closer to "yellow-red" phonetically. The "J" sound for "G" comes from French and is heard more in Middle-English than in Anglo-Saxon which has harder consonants, much like Latin.

Wonderful! Thank you!

This video was so awesome. Thank you.

Seriously fascinating stuff!

Every day I see more videos on something radiolab brilliantly covered.

This was a great video, thank you!

In Indonesian we usually call the colour pink as "merah muda" (literally means young red) or "merah jambu". The latter refers to the fruit jambu (Syzygium aqueum or I suppose watery rose apple?), which I think is the exact same thing like how we named the colour orange 😃

10 / 10 best show on youtube.

Could you please add the sources about colors and languages ? As far as I know “red” is indeed third in the “color language scale” but finding blue on the sixth position come as a real surprise. Would you mind to share where you got that information from ?

This is very informative! Thanks!

This is fascinating!

I love Dr. Otherwords!

Such a cool video! Super neat!

As an artist, This is one of my favourite episodes.

2:54 Extreme example of ad-hoc explanation: we have no idea, but we can tweak the data so that it accommodates to any hypothesis we may develop and seem like we know something.

I absolutely love this

Always showin up for Otherwords

I know purple was a much later addition, but from "the seven colors" its place is taken up by both indigo and violet, which I never really leaned to differentiate, as purple seemed more logical as a sixth color to me. I'm surprised you didn't mention indigo and violet, especially where the notions came from and where they disappeared off to.

How I love listening to Dr B!

Great stuff, love her

I love these. They are like small fun facts ! 😍😊

Bait and switch -- I spent the whole video waiting to learn about how we know that ancient humans didn't have color words...

Useful information one can glean from …👏👏

I think it's fascinating, how different languages change the spelling/pronunciation of the colour orange and the fruit. In german those 2 words are spelled the same but pronounced differently. In italian the word for said colour is arancione and the fruit is arancia.

Pink is thought to have a calming effect. One shade known as "drunk-tank pink" is sometimes used in prisons to calm inmates. While pink's calming effect has been demonstrated, researchers of color psychology have found that this effect only occurs during the initial exposure to the color.

Funny enough, in Portuguese, at least in Brazil, the color orange is called "laranja" (orange) or "abóbora" (pumpkin). Ps: It is also commonly used as "cor de laranja/abóbora" (color of Orange/pumpkin)

I heard an anecdote once (not sure if it was true or not) where some folks tried to be very careful not to describe the colour of the sky to their daughter, or have it described to her as blue or anything. Not sure how they managed that in this day and age. At any rate, the anecdote I heard was that at age five when they asked the daughter what colour the sky was, she looked at them, confused, and said it had no (inherent) colour, that it was colourless. I think about that a lot, because while yes sometimes the sky seems very colourful, like a bright clear day or at sunrise or sunset, most of the time at least where I live it does seem colourless - and more or less it kinda is, though getting into the philosophy of colour is beyond a KZfaq comment I think. I just find that anecdote fascinating and kinda wish we were taught that the sky was inherently colourless. I dunno, it just feels right to me. As someone who doesn't have a favourite colour, but does have very strong opinions about different shades and hues of colours, I'm very glad for the hundreds+ of words to describe what I actually mean 😊

I love these videos! Something as simple as “color” has such a colorful past…😏

OMG So, there’s a tool song, called Lateralus. Not only is it in a time signature and rhythm that matches the Fibonacci Sequence but the lyrics are ‘Black and white are all I see, in my infancy, Red and Yellow then came to be’ I am in awe of how deep that song goes

Funny how narang word comes from the Sanskrit but the westernisation and colonisation has impacted the Indian subcontinent in a way people have forgotten their roots

As of kid, I had been fascinated of the names of the colors in a large Crayola box

I learned so much from your videos. Today I learned where the word bear came from.

"Mabel Land's rainbows have colors that only bees and art-students can see!"

Thank you

Please make more videos about word's story, etymology etc.

Also, in our digital age, every color can be described by 3 values: red intensity, green intensity, and blue intensity. These intensity values are usually in hexadecimal, which represent values in the range of 0 to 1 (or 0% to 100%).

Thank you.

Very cool video. I remember hearing that I think it's Russian that has two words for light and and dark blue in their basic color set so Russian kids were better able tell the difference between varying shades of blue than children who only had one word for blue in their language. Also I question the validity of the chart that shows people's favorite color. The best color is obviously orange. The sooner we acknowledge this fact, the better off we'll be :P

te amo dra erica brozovsky

It's kinda crazy to think about a time where color wasn't important enough to have words seeing how now it's one of the first things you learn as an infant. Even learning a new language colors are among the first taught.

Like orange the color and orange the fruit, in Indonesia we have the word "coklat" for brown and chocolate

Killed it

Let’s not forget the Queen of colours theory on screen aka Miranda Priestly.

In Sweden, in the early seventies, when I was in kindergarten, the common word for the colour "orange" was "brand-gul". Literal translation: fire yellow. "Orange" (the colour) was used too, but I had a book about colours where orange (the fruit) was described as "brandgul". I just asked my daughter, born 2004. She had to think long and hard to recall hearing "brandgul" back when she was in kindergarten. Fun fact: orange the fruit is called "apelsin". We said "apelsin-gul" too, rather than "orange".