The surprising pattern behind color names around the world

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7 жыл бұрын

Why so many languages invented words for colors in the same order.
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In 1969, two Berkeley researchers, Paul Kay and Brent Berlin, published a book on a pretty groundbreaking idea: that every culture in history, when they developed their languages, invented words for colors in the exact same order. They claimed to know this based off of a simple color identification test, where 20 respondents identified 330 colored chips by name. If a language had six words, they were always black, white, red, green, yellow, and blue. If it had four terms, they were always black, white, red, and then either green or yellow. If it had only three, they were always black, white, and red , and so on. The theory was revolutionary - and it shaped our understanding of how color terminologies emerge.
Read more on the research mentioned in this video:
Cook, Kay, and Regier on the World Color Survey: goo.gl/MTUi9C
Stephen C. Levinson on Yele color terms: goo.gl/CYDfvw
John A. Lucy on Hanunó'o color terms: goo.gl/okcyC3
Loreto, Mukherjee, and Tria on color naming population simulations: goo.gl/rALO1S
To learn more about how your language's color words can affect the way you think, check out this video lecture: goo.gl/WxYi1q
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Пікірлер: 7 500

@lauracardoso1325 4 жыл бұрын

Dividing colors between "light", "dark" and "red" seemed weird only until I realized that's exactly how I divide laundry.

@Living_Connectedness 4 жыл бұрын

Haha Woah so true!

@ROR5CH4CH 4 жыл бұрын

Pattern found! :0

@malachorfives 4 жыл бұрын

😲😲😲

@lauracardoso1325 4 жыл бұрын

@@van-hieuvo8208 dude, what? I'm dye-ing to know how you got to a period joke from here.

@greenergrass4060 4 жыл бұрын

Oh my god. Maybe our ancestors were able to distinguish and describes colors by a similar fashion in the past

@alexdiduk4611 4 жыл бұрын

Imagine trying to translate this video into one of the languages with 3 colours

@dougthealligator 4 жыл бұрын

Alex Diduk there’d probably be a lot of “the color of x”

@ShadowTheAge 4 жыл бұрын

just use kpe

@tonyyyfromcroatiaa681 4 жыл бұрын

@Alexander Supertramp Comparisson with other well-known objects? As he mentiont i think..?

@moondust2365 4 жыл бұрын

@@tonyyyfromcroatiaa681 True. For example, in my native language, Tagalog, there's only names for red (pula), orange (kahel), yellow (dilaw), green (berde/luntian), blue (asul/bughaw), white (puti), and black (itim). We use "color _" or "color of _" when referring to other colors. Specifically, we say "kulay abo" when referring to gray in general, but "kulay ng abo" for the specific color of ash. Also, we have two* "terms" for purple, "kulay ube" (deep/midium violet) and "kulay lilak" (liliac and lavender; light violet?), and for brown, "kayumanggi" (tan/brown skin tone, for skin specifically ["kulay kayumanggi" if you want to compare the color of one object to the color of skin]) and "kulay tsokolate/kape" (for foods and drinks respectively). *"Lila" or "Kulay Lila" is typically used as a translation for purple in general. Although I sometimes end up thinking of the Lilac color. So to separate the two, I use "Lila" for purple in general and "Lilak" for Lilac/Lavender, although that's not official. Although, we actually use the English terms "purple" and "violet" more often anyway.

@zongi700 4 жыл бұрын

@@moondust2365 that's so interesting! thanks for the insight! :)

@saulgoodmanKAZAKH 2 жыл бұрын

In Kazakh "Green" and "Blue" used to have the same word "Kök". The word only meaning "Green", which is "Jasıl" became part of the language a lot later. This is why sometimes you see Juice boxes labelled as "Blue Apple", because some people are not used to the new word yet.

@xaoasakura Жыл бұрын

Haha nice kok

@yobotbeats Жыл бұрын

Кайфово, что в русском 12 цветов. Можно просто добавить прилагательное, чтобы почти полностью описать цвет для человека

@ikhares Жыл бұрын

same in Vietnamese! our "green" and "blue" are both the word "xanh"

@adapienkowska2605 Жыл бұрын

The same way English manage to live with one word for light blue and dark blue.

@saulgoodmanKAZAKH Жыл бұрын

@@yobotbeats в языках, где цветов меньше можно также просто описывать цвета. "Цвета неба", "цвета розы", "темнее дуба" и т.д.

@dannymartial7997 Жыл бұрын

In Vietnamese, there’s no word for green. There’s blue, and then there’s “leaf-blue” to describe green. So my Vietnamese parents sometimes have a hard time differentiating between objects that are green vs blue because they’re the same word. I thought it was weird until I realized it’d be like me differentiating between indigo and blue/purple, which is a color I didn’t grow up learning.

@shadow_hunter1004 Жыл бұрын

Other comments said that in vietnamese green and blue have the same name, not that green just doesn't has one. And that you differentiate between leaf-color and sea-color.

@user-gu9yq5sj7c 11 ай бұрын

Language doesn't prevent me from distinguishing reality like colors. I learned about how English doesn't have some words like in other languages. English even borrow some words like deja vu. But that doesn't prevent me from understanding those realities even if a word for it doesn't exist. I still can see more shades of colors even if a word in English doesn't exist for it. Like different shades of blue. It's like how someone was born deaf or some animals and never heard or learned language but still understands and sees basic realities like nature. You said so yourself and other comments here said that there is a differentiating word for blue and green in Vietnamese and that's "leaf" and "ocean". Perhaps it was more your parents were struggling to understand a different language.

@peepeetrain8755 9 ай бұрын

i'm a native english and i don't know the difference between Indigo and Purple, they're both purple to me

@anhthutranhoang9680 6 ай бұрын

I was always struggled with blue and green until I learned English. And I'm like "How convenient and easy it is". I realized that English is even easier to use in comparison with my mother language😂. Btw I wish our language just has "you" and "I" 🥲.

@nehiroz1960 5 ай бұрын

Then what do you guys call teal/turqoise????

@slothy7600 5 жыл бұрын

ahh yes the three primary colors, light, dark, and red.

@UwU-fc6em 4 жыл бұрын

Becus back then no one cared about any of the other primary colors

@xredjasperx247 4 жыл бұрын

Maggie Caron yeah, that’s the joke. Well done on trying to explain it though.

@KBC7050 4 жыл бұрын

well if you think about it yellow = light blue = dark red = red

@KBC7050 4 жыл бұрын

@Maggie Caron primary colors rely on color theory and depend on what color space you're using. in paints, red yellow and blue were historically the most readily available pigments. when talking about primary colors in relation to paint it refers to the color theory that uses these pigments. inking is a different craft and uses a subtractive color space that's a bit different from paint. since you can't really ink on black, it instead subtracts from white. where white is rgb magenta is rb (-g) yellow is rg (-b) cyan is gb (-r) so to make blue you'd mix magenta and cyan (-g and -r) with this blue, you wouldn't be able to make green by adding yellow, since that would mean -b. you'd end up with black. it's a different medium from paint with different rules. there are also the primary colors in light, which is an additive color space. in light there is rgb, and magenta yellow and cyan are secondary colors, because you start from black. adding these primaries together creates white. just some color theory 101. i recommend reading more about this since it's very interesting :)

@saranikolovska540 4 жыл бұрын

@@KBC7050 That's really cool info! Thank you!

@OctagonalGolbat 4 жыл бұрын

Of course the most important colours to humans are night, day, and berry.

@eklectiktoni 4 жыл бұрын

Maybe.

@T1Oracle 4 жыл бұрын

Or night, day, and bleeding...

@chrono-glitchwaterlily8776 3 жыл бұрын

Meat is red too

@chrono-glitchwaterlily8776 3 жыл бұрын

@@T1Oracle period joke?

@thomasraahauge5231 3 жыл бұрын

And let's not forget the first three pigments available to mankind: Chalk, soot, and ocher . . . White, black, and red(ish)

@COMALiteJ 2 жыл бұрын

Even in English, many color names, even some “basic” ones, got their names from things. The _color_ orange is named after the _fruit_ orange, or rather, the fruit of the orange tree (what it was originally called). Until the English found out about oranges, they referred to that color as “reddish yellow.” Purple comes from the purpura mussels whose shells are deep purple or navy blue, and were the source for dyes of that color range (a very expensive source of dye in ancient times, which is why it was a sign of royalty or great wealth to wear purple). Those dyes range in color from what we today would call “crimson” to what we today would call “navy blue,” and would include “violet.”

@francisdec1615 2 жыл бұрын

In Swedish we used to call the colour orange "brandgul" - "fire yellow" when I was a kid in the 1970s. Now everyone calls it orange, although the fruit is called "apelsin" - "apple from China".

@DogDogGodFog Жыл бұрын

Meanwhile in Poland the violet variant is way more popular than the purpura variant. Tells you geography I guess. Had more flowers than shores

@aw7145 Жыл бұрын

I've always wondered why Purpur means purple (I've never heard it though, I've only heard Lila or Violett) in German, I always wondered how they got Purpur and English got purple

@nosy-cat Жыл бұрын

The fact that orange as a colour was a late addition to the English language can be seen in names like "robin redbreast", a bird with a clearly orange breast.

@sharondornhoff7563 Ай бұрын

@@nosy-cat Same for terms like "lavender", another recent addition.

@svgaryaev 3 жыл бұрын

In russian purple is not for "purpurnyy", it's for "fioletovyy"

@dabiggestballs 3 жыл бұрын

Fioletovyy is violet

@svgaryaev 3 жыл бұрын

@@dabiggestballs yes it is but first translation for fioletovyy is purple, in russian purpurnyy word is used very rarely

@TheQNigma 3 жыл бұрын

@@dabiggestballs Purpurnyy is closer to red on a spectrum. Fioletovyy is in the middle between blue and red. I think, in this video, fioletovyy is more accurate. Or it could be sirenevi.

@artemmentiy7107 3 жыл бұрын

Не, ну тебе надо было докопаться? Лично мне кажется, что сиреневый, пурпурный и фиолетовый - оттенки purple. Purple это нечто среднее

@svgaryaev 3 жыл бұрын

@@artemmentiy7107 пурпурный и фиолетовый - официальные переводы слова purple, вот только среди основных цветов спектра есть фиолетовый, но нет пурпурного, спроси у радуги

@dildown6424 4 жыл бұрын

Ah yes, I am watching a video about colors while being colorblind, definitily my smartest idea

@radyawirawan3823 4 жыл бұрын

thats sad

@adriangarcia5019 4 жыл бұрын

me too bro hahaha

@ConfusedArmy 4 жыл бұрын

completly color blind? is that a thing?

@ndpd7695 4 жыл бұрын

Well it's not bad to have a bit more knowledge about stuff

@nyoom1 4 жыл бұрын

@@ndpd7695 false knowledge

@andrewvodinh-ho7315 4 жыл бұрын

5:23 "Blue, on the other hand, was fairly scarce." Water and Sky: Am i a joke to you?

@rendyshadows 4 жыл бұрын

I think so .. But maybe they live in the forest and the sky always white ..

@peeenguinne3858 4 жыл бұрын

I get the joke, but tbh, blue is actually rare in nature.

@YbisZX 4 жыл бұрын

Water has no color - it transparent, or just reflect other objects. Color of sky useless for antient cultures, because it is just in the sky.

@nicolasjoannas6114 4 жыл бұрын

The sky is not blue, and it is not "azul". It is C E L E S T E Spanish FTW (?

@mach254 4 жыл бұрын

Water isnt blue its clear

@Abusiv3Hamst3r 2 жыл бұрын

Fun Fact, a lot of Japanese colors are metaphorical in nature. Such as brown being 茶色 literally "tea color" the same goes for yellow 黄色(amber color), gray 灰色 (ash color), and formerly blue　which shared a word with green for a while. Orange and pink more recently were brought along with English.

@lans8211 Жыл бұрын

It has to be pointed out that the Japanese language has a deep origin from Mandarin and grow out the Chinese culture itself afterwards. In this case, 茶色 is a term from Japanese language itself. But 青色, the color in the middle of blue and green, is from ancient Chinese. Mixing the two together is simply because of the dye then didn’t have pure light blue or green.

@azarishiba2559 11 ай бұрын

Actually, orange and pink have another names that don't come from English: pink is also called 桃色 ("peach color"), and orange is 橙色 ("sour orange color"). Japanese has actually many native words for things, but tend to drop some in favor of English... Which for me, as a native Spanish speaker, it's actually sad.

@gywghhb 10 ай бұрын

@@azarishiba2559 it's done in effort for Japan to be considered "European" and more westernized since Meji revolution. Also the nature of Japanese allows it to technically borrow any words from other languages and represent them in kaja in hope to look "cool" or "modern" while representing the same concept in kanji or Chinese vocabularies is considered "old." Personally, as a Chinese, I find this trend quite funny

@dastanjan320 2 ай бұрын

Is it true that japanese call the green at the traffic light as "ao" which is the word for Blue? I also understood that jaoanese use "midori " for green, but in other contexts

@Abusiv3Hamst3r 2 ай бұрын

@@dastanjan320 They use 青 to refer to green traffic lights, apples, and several other things. The reason is that using ao can also mean a bright vibrant green.

@scope40k 3 жыл бұрын

I have just realised that Russian and English speakers use different set of colours do describe the rainbow, though the total number of colours is still 7 for each: Russians use their unique "goluboy" (pigeon blue) color, but do not use the pink colour. Also as a Russian I never thought of pink as a separate colour, more like a lighter version of purple. It feels kinda odd because I cannot even pick the pink colour out of rainbow spectrum.

@user-wv4ms4qs4j Жыл бұрын

Что за бред. Загугли «цвета радуги» на английском и на русском. Разница совсем в другом. Мы не используем цвет «индиго» в качестве отдельного цвета в обычной речи. Только для уточнения (точно так же с пурпурным, каштановым и пр.). Для нас это тёмный “фиолетовый”, находящийся близко к «синему». В свою очередь «розовый» и “pink” это один и тот же цвет. Точно так же “violet” и «фиолетовый» это одно и то же. Розовый цвет сильно отличается в русской речи от фиолетового цвета, как в английском “violet” отличается от “pink”. В русской речи «голубой» и «синий» имеют такую же связь - один светлее другого. Автор видео явно не знает о такой штуке как «лингвистика». Заявлять что в русском языке только 12 обозначений цветов очевидно бессмысленно. Куда бирюзовый делся? Где фиолетовый? Зато пурпурный вставил.

@CvrtisBreach Жыл бұрын

@@user-wv4ms4qs4j он говорит про 00:53. Там указан розовый, но нет голубого. У англичан и голубой, и синий - это blue. А в русском есть дополнительно голубой. И что-то непонятное вы про purple/violet написали. Они оба фиолетовые, просто один в тёплых оттенках, другой в холодных. В видео речь об ОСНОВНЫХ цветах, а не о радуге. Бирюзовый мы вполне можем назвать сине-зеленый, а как ты назовешь синий, используя названия других цветов? При этом мы выделяем отдельно дополнительно голубой и розовый, когда англичане и голубой, и синий называют одним словом.

@CvrtisBreach Жыл бұрын

А я вижу розовый. По крайней мере на спектре в видео. Огромное пространство между красным и фиолетовым 😄 Просто радуга начинается на красном и заканчивается фиолетовым - они на краях спектра - и переход чисто физически отсутствует. Но если спетр радуги зациклить в круг или сдвинуть - вы розовый прекрасно увидите. И здесь речь не про радугу, а про палитру цветов )

@dhskshdksh Жыл бұрын

it’s really interesting because pink is just a weird color category in general. most “pink” colors are really just light red, but there is of course magenta, which is an actual point on the color spectrum, but not as commonly referred to as simply “pink”, so it makes sense why it’s difficult to pinpoint since it’s sort of an awkward label culturally.

@victoriaklarissa Жыл бұрын

@@dhskshdksh I'm a designer so watching this was quite intriguing to me, as people all around the globe categorize "basic" colors that are actually not... Colors (hues) but tones (light/dark, brightness values). I understand people that don't study this are not obligated to know this fact, but it's almost funny to see how humans are confusing in different ways just to be the same in the end (the clusters the video talked about)...

@mayadelaneys 7 жыл бұрын

This was far more interesting than I thought it was going to be.

@helloitsme7553 7 жыл бұрын

John keppelman maybe beauty is a fact, but because we all see different we all think different things are beautiful

@tomfoolyaface9862 7 жыл бұрын

HelloItsMe or what if everyone has the same favorite color we just call it different things. Idk, any type of color speculation interests me

@mayadelaneys 7 жыл бұрын

It's still interesting because regardless if it's a different red, which it isn't, we know how rods and cones work and it is illogical to think those of the same species wouldn't experience a physical effect relatively similarly, with obvious exceptions in gene mutation. We experience the emotional and pyschological effects of colors in the same way, so even if they are different colors we interpret their effects the same, like red as passion. So it doesn't matter if we might see them differently, your comment doesn't have any bearing on this. And even if we did see color differently, does that mean this is just suddenly not interesting? Honestly, wouldn't that make this idea of color patterns emerging even more interesting and an even stranger phenomenon?

@radnyx_games 7 жыл бұрын

I feel like the whole "do we see the same colors question" is pretty dumb. We all have the mental capacity to distinguish separate colors, and that's all that matters. Asking what a particular color "looks like" in someone else's eyes is meaningless because their brain is receiving the same particular sensations from the same particular wavelengths of light. Our brain just needed a way to tell us red is red because it isn't blue, and it isn't yellow. Now obviously the theory of all our "color perceptions" being swapped randomly doesn't extend very far, as everyone is able to agree on which colors are complementary (opposite sides of the color wheel, i.e. red and green). Additionally, all of us are able to comprehend the "nearness" of certain colors, because everyone can agree that red is much "closer" to yellow than it is blue. Given those limitations, I suppose the only possible permutation between people's color perception would be if one saw colors inverted from another (the color wheel being flipped around an axis, replacing each color with its complement). Regardless, we all (mostly) feel the same sensations and make the same connections about each color. Of course there's some cultural essence to colors, how red is *associated* with love and that just gets imprinted in our minds over time. I don't think there's a lot of natural evolutionary connections between emotion and colors but apparently red is evolutionary linked to hostility and danger (therefore, anger). Anyway, point is: I think the question about whether "we see the same colors" as each other is just a sensational mind-boggler for people to ponder for a second and then move on with their lives.

@marshmallowbudgie 7 жыл бұрын

yeah, it's like something out of the Bell Science series

@quentinle4892 7 жыл бұрын

In my native language, Vietnamese, we consider blue and green to be shades of the same color. To distinguish between the two, you have to qualify it by saying "sea color" or "plant color". On a random note, we have two words with crabs. It's interesting to see where a language and people's priorities lie.

@alsoandanswer 7 жыл бұрын

well, if you were on a fishing boat for 75% of your life, you would probably need to distinguish species of fish more often than colors

@manhphuc4335 7 жыл бұрын

Sonoma Calling! We also have plenty weird ways to describe yellow so yeah, and the word father in some of out dialects is the word bug in others so yeah language is weird.

@AiurMedia 7 жыл бұрын

so jungle just blend in the sky ... interesting

@mkd2839 7 жыл бұрын

Yang It doesn't work like that. To us those are 2 different colors, we just use the same word for it. So to distinguish we add objects in front, like plant, sea, sky, etc

@mkd2839 7 жыл бұрын

Yang It's the same as English, where until recently orange is a shade of red

@true_aureolin Жыл бұрын

In Russian, "purpurnyy" can be a shade of red, purple and similar to magenta. I think the word "fioletovyy" is used more often, and it corresponds more to the shade in the video. The most accurate definitions are "sirenevyy" or "lilovyy" (lilac), which describe colors through the coloring of flowers.

@neilreynolds3858 4 ай бұрын

Lilovyy. One of our kittens is called Lilac in English but that side of the family speaks English, Dutch, and Russian. The Russian is a very pretty name.

@true_aureolin Жыл бұрын

Also in Russian, the words "kofeynyy" (coffee), "kirpichnyy" (brick) can be used for shades of brown, for green shades -- salatovyy, travyanoy (herbal), izumrudnyy (emerald). Sometimes colors are associated with substances like honey, sand, milk.

@jeffkod5549 Жыл бұрын

Yeah, I love it, you see the color and you can describe it with something that contains this color. Bolotnyy color is yellow or green? Probably somewhere in the middle

@taylor_green_9 Жыл бұрын

Using comparison for shades happens a lot in Spanish too. It might be universal

@iloveuu Ай бұрын

Кирпичный не используется как цвет, вообще такого никогда не слышала. А про травяной - так только нарик скажет.

@iloveuu Ай бұрын

@@jeffkod5549The dark shade of yellowish-green

@pumpkinussy Ай бұрын

@@iloveuuЯ не раз слышал кирпичный, но чаще всего его используют, как синоним к коричневому. Кирпичи имеют множество разных цветов.

@DashingSteel 4 жыл бұрын

Gotta love the "Wet" and "Dry" spectrum of colours Imagine someone being rasist in this language! "Them M O I S T people are taking all our jobs!"

@fan2kobaladdu79 4 жыл бұрын

moist moist moist moist

@Viertelhund 4 жыл бұрын

But, if you're thinkin' 'bout my baby, it don't matter if you're wet or dry.

@saynuka7893 4 жыл бұрын

moist is british slang

@MaxWunderlich 4 жыл бұрын

This comment made me spit out my coffee. Now my screen is moist, too.

@SlongestKongest 4 жыл бұрын

The green people

@loki2547 5 жыл бұрын

Hey, what colour is your hair? Kpe

@moseslee5721 5 жыл бұрын

Henry Fliss what colour's your hair: Dark

@ttemssgraffe625 5 жыл бұрын

"Hey, what colour is your hair?" *are you blind, you dumb fool?*

@vivictinimoved 5 жыл бұрын

NO this could habe been a jack reference i'm sad

@zKampeR45 5 жыл бұрын

Yes but, is it Kpe or Kpe

@loki2547 5 жыл бұрын

zKampeR it’s kpe

@user-ec8br1zo2k 3 жыл бұрын

I've just realized that russian "rozovyy" comes from "rose", so it's quite comparative. However, we don't use it as "the color of rose", it's just a fun-fact from etymology.

@putzillathezar7193 3 жыл бұрын

In German language there is also the word "rosa" for the 🌹 as for the colour

@johnvarley4561 3 жыл бұрын

Similar to 'orange' in English. Orange is the fruit which the colour probably derived it's name from Also violet, like the flower.

@jeffkod5549 Жыл бұрын

У нас если читать последние 2 буквы это ЫЙ или ИЙ в английском проще YY, КРАСНЫЙ - KRASNYY, почему не IY, а YY интересно

@iloveuu Ай бұрын

Хочешь прикол в том же духе? Разбери слово наслаждаться. На-*СЛАЖ*-даться От слова сладкий.

@palomaroggeri8680 2 күн бұрын

Its actually the same thing in Portuguese! The word for pink is “the color of rose”, how interesting

@honeybunch5765 2 жыл бұрын

I once asked a Xhosa lady to teach me some words and colours were part of it. She knew only two or three colours in her language but knew the colours in English. My husband was an electrical technician in the airforce many moons ago. He once trained a Sotho guy and realised the man only knew the basic colours. They had to send him on a colour course so he could actually learn his trade. Now it makes so much sense to me.

@shakhzodyuldoshboev6348 5 жыл бұрын

In Uzbek language, we don't actually have any words for "grey", "orange", and "brown". If one wants to describe an object of one of these colours in Uzbek they say "colour of ash", "colour of fire", and........ "colour of liver".

@shakhzodyuldoshboev6348 4 жыл бұрын

@Pudgy Pudge you mean me and 32 million of other Uzbeks speak inexistent language?

@vinissues4634 4 жыл бұрын

@@shakhzodyuldoshboev6348 🤣🤣🤣🤣 calm down

@phixvig 4 жыл бұрын

@@O01 о, русские гопники проснулись ;)

@bettym.1640 4 жыл бұрын

@@O01 Джентельмены, давайте же не будем показывать русский язык не с самой лучшей стороны, прошу

@user-kn6gf2cs2w 4 жыл бұрын

@Pudgy Pudge, В корне неверно. Это другая страна просто с большим русским меньшинством.

@job8170 5 жыл бұрын

I watched a study once where someone was exploring the idea that we dont refer to the sky as blue until we're told the sky is blue. He tested this on his 2 year old. Asking her every day what colour the sky was and never telling her what colour he thought it was. She said white until about 3 1/2.

@XxQueenChristinaxX 5 жыл бұрын

Draziw Drow Yes and the Japanese flag is the prime example.

@user-pv9ui7gv9m 5 жыл бұрын

Because of air pollution..?!

@ben4675 5 жыл бұрын

@@user-pv9ui7gv9m No, because the sun of the Japanese flag is red so the culture of Japan has affected their perception of colour.

@user-pv9ui7gv9m 5 жыл бұрын

@@ben4675 about the color of the sky.

@aziara369 5 жыл бұрын

I dont know but this comment gave me anxiety. Idk, maybe because what we have been taught are all wrong??? I over think too much im sorry

@BakrAli10 3 жыл бұрын

0:18 Basic color categories 1:40 Color “hierarchy” 3:46 Color-object comparison 4:02 Hanuno’o color spectrum 4:28 Berlin and Kay universal map of color

@IRosamelia 3 жыл бұрын

I did my graduation paper about the history of the Kuna natives in the border between Panamá and Colombia and thought it was intriguing they didn't have a name for "green" or "blue" in their language. To them, the color of leaves and the sky was just a background dark or light color by default 🌳🌬🌿

@scourge5410 5 жыл бұрын

in russia we don't really use purpurnyy for purple, we mostly say fioletovyy

@ayrat8942 5 жыл бұрын

Хах, точно

@niraisatsana 5 жыл бұрын

😈

@niraisatsana 5 жыл бұрын

@Reid Chrysler Manares yes

@liljepolak8565 5 жыл бұрын

@Reid Chrysler Manares ya, we mostly use violet. Although we also use the word sirenevyy, which means purple

@sketep1117 5 жыл бұрын

@@liljepolak8565 It's grayish purple usually.

@mikul9204 4 жыл бұрын

just refer to the colors by their hex value, duh

@NMPshadow 4 жыл бұрын

nah, tell them by the wavelength please

@firstnamelastname8903 4 жыл бұрын

Binary is much better

@thedoublehelix5661 4 жыл бұрын

@@NMPshadow BIG BRAIN

@notsogood_nsg 4 жыл бұрын

or by their pigment number lol

@uandresbrito5685 4 жыл бұрын

My classmates were once discussing which color was marsala actually, then I just sent them the color in hex definition and won the discussion. But then I was kicked out

@peachykeen3744 2 жыл бұрын

I remember learning in my linguistic class in college that some Native American/Alaskan tribes had multiple words for blue to explain the ocean, ice, rivers, ponds, etc. It's been so long ago I can't remember

@Pollicina_db Жыл бұрын

I also heard te inuit people have many words for white to distinguish thin and bulky ice

@economonstre3136 Жыл бұрын

I am from Cote d'Ivoire, the country mentioned at the beginning of the video and i'm very impressed how deep your research have been. You got one more subscriber!

@caitzs 4 жыл бұрын

At 1 year of age, my kids learned about which fruits they could eat from the garden. They had no problem distinguishing ripe red tomatoes and raspberries vs unripe yellow/green ones, but they had a very hard time accepting that there were ripe yellow varieties of tomatoes and raspberries. It took both of them until about 4-5 years of age to try a yellow tomato. They were convinced it was unripe, regardless of what I said. Being able to communicate red/purple, the color of many ripe fruits, vs yellow/green, the color of unripe fruit, is very important when a group must harvest their own food. Blue is all around us in sky and water, but the blueness isn't important to distinguish for daily existence. My kids really didn't care if the sky was blue or gray or white. They just cared about it being light (day) or dark (night). Also, whether water is good to drink is not dependent on its blueness. It's more about whether it's light/clear (good to drink) or dark/murky (bad to drink).

@TokyoTaisu Жыл бұрын

Thanks this was helpful to me, wondering why my kids are a little bit picky about green veggies. Always wondered where that came from.

@abstrakt8709 Жыл бұрын

Yeah this helped me understand better too :D

@uvotmin Жыл бұрын

Ok but gray sky indicates bad weather, wouldn't that be useful?

@mitchelmosier7205 Жыл бұрын

@@uvotminBut it doesn’t necessarily. As someone from the Seattle area, the sky is grey very often but you can tell the difference between our normal overcast days and days where it is actually rainy/stormy by the shade (light vs. dark) of grey, therefore I still think the distinction, while being more nuanced, is still not entirely necessary

@peepeetrain8755 9 ай бұрын

@@uvotmin light and dark. light sky is clear, dark would be rain

@pouyashooliz9875 4 жыл бұрын

In Persian language: Blue = "Abi", translates to "watery" Brown = "Ghahvei", translates to "from coffee" Purple = "Banafsh", translates to "viola flower" (a purple colored flower called "banafsheh") Yellow = "Zard", translates to "from gold" (Zar = gold) Green = "Sabz", translates similar to the word "vegetable-y" (Sabzi = vegetable) Orange = "Naranji", translates to another citrus similar to "orange fruit" but with a more sour taste. Pink = "Soorati", translates to "face colored" Gray = "Khakestari", translates to "Ash colored" I just realized they are all comparison words other than the words for black, white, and red.

@beckerkorn1 4 жыл бұрын

Pouya Shooliz In English, there are just orange and violet for comparison color words. We refer to vegetables as greens sometimes too, but it seems more likely that the color name existed first and started being used as a more informal term for vegetables. Here’s something interesting: first, as you may already know, English has many different sources. We can use the word soil (from Latin) and dirt (from Norse) interchangeably. In terms of colors, they all have Germanic roots except for orange (derived from your word in Persian!) and purple (derived from Greek). Purple and violet are usually seen as interchangeable in English too. So the two words that are not Germanic just happen to also be comparison words. But even some of the Germanic words are comparisons, for example white comes from weiss which also means wheat. English speakers just don’t know that it’s a representational word because white and wheat are spelled/pronounced differently. Obviously they are close, but so are green and grin and those meanings have nothing in common. So it’s not intuitive that white comes from wheat. And also, the color of wheat falls into the yellow category. According to the video, it sounds like in earlier times it would have just been grouped with the other “light” colors.

@topotondo828 4 жыл бұрын

@@beckerkorn1 Wheat in German is Weizen, not Weiß, but does probably derive from the color.

@topotondo828 4 жыл бұрын

Hi! English speaker trying to learn Farsi over here. :) I found some other color names and I'm curious about them. I read that قرمز (crimson/red) is also the name for the Kermes insect (from which red dye is obtained), but I assume they came up with the name of the color before the name of the insect. سرخ apparently also means scarlet? Then there's ارغوانی which is described as "colour of the blossom of Cercis siliquastrum (Judas tree), amethyst, mauve, purple" Also زرشکی (wiktionary says it means "purple") comes from zereshk, a plant which in English is called barberry. So what's the difference between zereshki, arğavâni and banafsh?

@kimaya.3563 3 жыл бұрын

The part about 'face colored' how is that so? What color would I be considered as a black person?

@pouyashooliz9875 3 жыл бұрын

Nein The video is referring to how everyday objects are used to name the color itself, not how a color is used to describe objects/people. Persian is an ancient language that was formed 5000 to 10000 years ago where the everyday people of that society were probably light brown skin. I don’t think they came into contact with an African person until much later when they formed an empire about 2500 years ago. I don’t know how they referred to a black person but given that the concept of “race” didn’t exist back then, and that Persians themselves range in color from light brown to very dark brown, they probably would have just though of blacks as regular people of another clan or tribe. In modern Persian language however, your question has a boring answer: a black person is referred to as “black person”.

@Helen01101977 3 жыл бұрын

Actually, in Russian language we have a word for yellow-green: салатовый (salatoviy)

@fricka4798 3 жыл бұрын

English speakers use "chartreuse" which is the name of an alcoholic drink

@thomasraahauge5231 3 жыл бұрын

@@fricka4798 Or lime (as in lime fruit)?

@Taniachi_Fractal 3 жыл бұрын

Это не отдельный цвет, так как он прямо отсылается к вещи этого цвета, в данном случае - капусте салату. This isn't an independent color since it referers to a thing colored this way - cabbage salad

@Helen01101977 3 жыл бұрын

@@Taniachi_Fractal well, but orange (colour) also refers to orange (fruit).

@user-dl1zx9sr4q 3 жыл бұрын

@@Helen01101977 Maybe in English, but not in Russian. Because in Russian orange is apelsin and we don't have this word in language without context of the color

@krisandres2011 3 жыл бұрын

Colors in the Tagalog language (Philippines): Black = Itim White = Puti Red = Pula Yellow = Dilaw (adapted from the Tagalog word for "turmeric") Green = Lunti or Luntian ("Berde," a Spanish loanword, is more commonly used) Blue = Bughaw ("Asul," a Spanish loanword, is more commonly used) Brown = Kayumanggi (usually used for skin tones and nature, otherwise it's "Kulay-Brown," literally "color-brown") Orange = Dalandan (adapted from "dalandan," or Philippine orange fruit; we also use "Kahel," a Spanish loanword) Gray = Malamaya (literally "like a sparrow"; we also use "Abuhin" or "ash-ish")

@gkgk6439 5 жыл бұрын

In Turkish we dont have an actual name for brown, we call it "the color of coffee" which is *kahverengi* kahverengi=kahve+renk+i *Kahve* is *coffee* , *renk* is *color* and *i* is a suffix meaning *of*

@ceydafikir2736 5 жыл бұрын

woah as a Turkish person I've never realized that

@gkgk6439 5 жыл бұрын

Shrek Wazowski jfhvhbrndjcydh

@nanobulut 5 жыл бұрын

In Turkish we call "Konur" for Brown.

@gkgk6439 5 жыл бұрын

Yıldırım Başkurt wait... if we already have a word for brown in old Turkish, then why dont we use it in modern Turkish?

@sypwer 5 жыл бұрын

Lol i was just thinking why doesn’t my language have anything interesting while all of those people in the comments mention something from their language Than i saw your comment and i was like “oh sure, there’s that”

@EdmfreeMlove 4 жыл бұрын

In Vietnamese, we call green and blue both "xanh". When we need to distinguish, we call blue as "xanh nước biển" ("xanh" of the ocean) and green as "xanh lá" ("xanh" of the leaf)

@star8f1sh Жыл бұрын

Different languages are so interesting

@kcahdp Жыл бұрын

I've heard the same about Japanese

@Yanaro-pi8pt Ай бұрын

@@kcahdp Cuz the root is from the Chinese. It was just green, and then came "blue" but they didn't invent a word for it so it was green for both.

@BellamyCatherine 3 жыл бұрын

One of the most special documentaries I've ever seen. Thank you for the topic. 🙏🏻

@Snow-ej5fm 2 жыл бұрын

i did not even know that about the colours in the philippines! but now that i’m breaking it down,, it makes sense. we have our own words for red (pula) and black (itim, also meaning dark) but our words for blue (asul) and pink (rosas) come from spanish words.

@pratamadanterakhir 5 жыл бұрын

In Bahasa Indonesia, we call the shades of a colour by age e.g. Pink it’s ‘Merah Muda’ which literally translates to ‘Young Red’ as well as the darker shades of red ‘Merah Tua’, ‘Old Red.’ It applies to blue, green and yellow too. In my own theory, it’s like the way fruits, vegetables and paddies age because of agricultural aspect of the earlier times of the country. Just my own opinion tho.

@Egregius 5 жыл бұрын

You're probably right tho :)

@jiancarlobalcruz9249 5 жыл бұрын

What about "Buah Merah? " I saw those drinks here in the Philippines! What does it mean? 😂😂

@kanduyog1182 5 жыл бұрын

There's a similar pattern here in the Philippines, like in the word murang kape for the color beige, which literally means young coffee

@FinnManusia 5 жыл бұрын

We called pink as "Merah Jambu" because it comes from a fruit named "Jambu Air" or "Rose Apple" in English.

@tubester358 5 жыл бұрын

i collect savage photos - "Buah Merah" sounds like "Red Fruit", not sure what drink that is. Could be a fruit cocktail or *more likely a syrup.

@nedisahonkey 7 жыл бұрын

This is false. In soviet Russia we have only two colors. Red and Grey. All other colors are bourgeois propaganda.

@muralikumar6290 7 жыл бұрын

Ned Gold Lol...😂😂😂 pure gold

@alexolas1246 7 жыл бұрын

On another topic, if the amount of dedicated color words a language has is an indicator of how "civilized" that culture is, wouldn't that mean Russians are objectively superior to us Angloes?

@MrCrashDavi 7 жыл бұрын

@nedisahonkey 7 жыл бұрын

la .alEksolas. Russians are greatest nation, we can first into space AND kill nazis.

@alexolas1246 7 жыл бұрын

Btw, since Russians think of what I'll call "cyan" (which 0:26 says you guys call "siniy", but someone else in these comments said that siniy and goluboy are actually reversed in that chart) as being an independent color rather than a special kind of blue, then what colors are the sky and water in Russian?

@jdngo 3 жыл бұрын

Did you know that in Vietnam, "màu xanh" both means blue and green. They are diffrenciated by adding "dương" for blue and "lá cây"/"lá" (which means leaf) for green. So: màu xanh dương is blue and màu xanh lá is green

@HazhMcMoor 2 ай бұрын

I already know about this topic from somewhere else but as always, Vox makes a nice video about it! Good job

@writerudite 4 жыл бұрын

I've always wondered why I can't express our "goluboy" color in English and why I have to call it "blue" when it's not blue. And now I've finally realized... P.S. I’m getting dozens of responses so I’d like to clarify one point: it’s not about translation, actually. Indeed, “goluboy” may be called light blue/sky blue/cyan/turquoise/azure, etc. But the key point is that in Russian, we would never say that the sky is blue, because it’s not. It’s about the worldview or something. That’s why, when speaking English, we basically have to replace one colour with another to verbalize the idea of clear skies.

@yokami403 4 жыл бұрын

Call it "light blue" ! In French : "bleu clair", ( it means the same)... Same process for Spanish or German etc...

@rosaramirezdearellano9860 4 жыл бұрын

Yokami , light blue in spanish can be "celeste" or "azul claro". The first one is more appropriate, but the second is more used

@writerudite 4 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much, it's very useful as I learn French and Spanish as well. Merci and gracias!

@yokami403 4 жыл бұрын

@@writerudite Pas de problème !

@veronicasaitta9688 4 жыл бұрын

In Italian we say azzurro!

@xalxvx 3 жыл бұрын

Vox : “Red is the most distinct color” red-green colorblind people : 👁👄👁

@bananaforscale1283 3 жыл бұрын

@@FirstnameLastname-uo3yu Are you sure you know what you read?

@bananaforscale1283 3 жыл бұрын

@@FirstnameLastname-uo3yu No, I meant that he said "most distinct" not "most people".

@FirstnameLastname-uo3yu 3 жыл бұрын

Bananaforscale okay then.

@dorthynorton6699 3 жыл бұрын

just refer to the colors by their hex value, duh

@chinmayjain9029 3 жыл бұрын

I am one😭😭😭

@iceman10129 2 жыл бұрын

Sharing this with my animation team tomorrow as we have artists from all over the world. So cool!

@wabisabi6875 Жыл бұрын

One of the most memorable episodes of Radiolab was their exploration of this issue, beginning with Gladstone's Homer. Cool stuff.

@sbubby8805 6 жыл бұрын

I actually called the first color "Pantone," and got confused when the next two showed up.

@Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh 6 жыл бұрын

such a noob ;-)

@sarahda845 6 жыл бұрын

NoobDoesMC SAME lmao

@teai9726 6 жыл бұрын

I did too

@MissMiniTyra 6 жыл бұрын

Ahaha same 😂😂

@tyymes 6 жыл бұрын

Hahaha this made me laugh out loud.

@ritwikreddy5670 3 жыл бұрын

In my language, yellow and green are seen as two different shades of a single colour which is similar to the colour of a ripe leaf. We call green as leaf colour and yellow as turmeric colour.

@143kiruba 3 жыл бұрын

I guess its same for all south indian (dravidian) languages

@ihaveagoal4665 2 жыл бұрын

@@143kiruba in hindi... it's different for both

@orangebeagle3068 2 жыл бұрын

That makes sense to me. When I was little we would play “Slug bug” in the car and our points of contention were usually about whether a car was more yellow or greenish. My sister would call “slug bug yellow” and I would call “slug bug green” and she’d say “where?” and when I’d point to it she’d say “I already called that one. Slug bug yellow”. I’d say “But it’s not yellow, it’s a yellowish green.” Fun times.

@cpt.flamer7184 2 жыл бұрын

I mean, this video is very vague, there are so much more to it, for instance the evolution of language is important, in English green and yellow are separated, but this distinction developed pretty recently, in proto-indo european there was only one word for both colours and in different language the distinction occured in different times or sometime it didn't at all. In many cases the word for yellow and the word for green came from the same old word that was used to describe both this colours by our ancestors thousands years ago. It's not suprising that some tribes have less colours in their languages, with development of society the numbers of important colours and distinctions between them increase. Sometimes in different way in different places.

@Waterpoet1 2 жыл бұрын

@@orangebeagle3068 We used to say "punch buggy"

@Gabriella-ug4tl 3 жыл бұрын

this is possibly one of the most fascinating videos ive ever seen

@muhammadidris2834 2 жыл бұрын

This is very interesting to me as an artist. This also makes sense why Red-Black is more common and feels more natural than say Yellow-Black or Blue-Black. This can actually be a more accurate way to understand color harmony and how we perceive each color.

@yahliamir8388 6 жыл бұрын

I'm wondering if the reason red is so dominant in our mind is related to it being a sign of danger (poisonous animals usually have red or orange tones, fire is red-esque , etc)

@yahliamir8388 6 жыл бұрын

While blue and green, while being widely present in the environment (plants, sea, sky) are more of a background kind of color which our mind kind of ignores.

@khatchiganteblian550 6 жыл бұрын

The reason for that is, that red is Literally stronger than any other visible color. It has the longest wavelength in the visible spectrum and thus, catches our attention the most and the wavelength gets progressively shorter as you continue through the spectrum.That's why colors with shorter wavelengths seem softer or like background colors.

@yahliamir8388 6 жыл бұрын

Khachig Ainteblian I don't believe this is true, do you know it for a fact? longer wavelength mean less energetic, not more so. Also it's worth pointing out that our brain doesn't perceive information like that. our ears don't notice lower pitches best because they have longer wavelength, even though they are more powerful. Our brain focus on the middle range, to better notice human speech.

@clairec5830 6 жыл бұрын

Khachig Ainteblian Yellow-green is actually the most visible color that the human eye is sensitive to. The human eye is most sensitive to 555nm which we perceive as yellow-green (the color yellow and green is usually where peak sensitivity is at). Have you ever seen construction workers wearing fluorescent yellow-green vests? Highlighters?? Even tennis balls!! School busses and yellow fire hydrants are also a prime example of the color yellow being more noticeable to the human eye.

@yahliamir8388 6 жыл бұрын

claire chen 陳嘉蓮 That makes more sense :) I wonder why yellow? is it a physical property of our eyes or some kind of processing by our brain? perhaps it's related to the color of the sun and natural light here on earth

@patrick7-eleven248 3 жыл бұрын

What impressed me was that the two linguists were jamming out with a piano and a gut bucket.

@Dayvit78 3 жыл бұрын

Richard Feynman has entered the chat.

@amac6404 2 жыл бұрын

I'm doing some research on Irish Gaelic colour terminology and I noticed the exact same pattern. The brown being second last just verified it all for me. There's also been some controversy among myself about whether the Latin term "corcra" should be accepted as the word for purple in Irish and whether we should go all the way back to calling brown (donn), "rua" or rusty red (the word for red hair ect)

@elnino9m Жыл бұрын

I watched this multiple times within years and I still love it

@permin9533 4 жыл бұрын

This is so weird that we, Russians, have a separate word for light blue, making it a basic colour in our language

@kwaece857 4 жыл бұрын

ouhhhh its like pink

@sebastianalejandro481 4 жыл бұрын

Spanish speaking people have a separated word for "light blue" too, and used as a basic color

@moraantonparcet4546 4 жыл бұрын

@@sebastianalejandro481 CELESTE

@user-xg7yn2qm8b 4 жыл бұрын

We, Greeks, too! The color of the Ocean is different from the color of the sky!

@annachiara1707 4 жыл бұрын

In Italian it's called azzurro or celeste

@g.hmusicc 5 жыл бұрын

Here’s a kinda-fun-fact of colors in Vietnam that you probably don’t care 🤷‍♂️: In Vietnamese, blue and green have the same name, which is “xanh”, BUT, if you add another word after it, it will be different, so, blue in Vietnamese is “xanh DƯƠNG” or “xanh BIỂN” (that word means ocean/beach) and green in Vietnamese í “xanh LÁ” or “xanh LỤC” (i’m not actually quite sure with the second word but the first word means leaf). So that’s how you call the two colors in Vietnamese :)

@geekman2000 5 жыл бұрын

Many other languages have the same word for "green" and "blue". Linguists describe them using the word "grue".

@g.hmusicc 5 жыл бұрын

GeekMan2000 gruesomely interesting

@biggusballuz5405 5 жыл бұрын

Xanh, from Thanh, both of which are from 青 in Chinese/Hantu. 青 in Chinese have also originally meant to mean all shades of green, blue and black, but eventually Chinese would evolve words like 綠，藍 and 黑 to describe green, blue and black respectively, which is Luc, Lam and Hac in Vietnamese. Xanh duong is 青洋 (blue ocean), Xanh bien is 青𣷭 (blue sea). Xanh la is 青蘿 (green leaf/plant), Xanh luc is 青綠 (lit. green green).

@bsbx 5 жыл бұрын

G . H we care about it.

@g.hmusicc 5 жыл бұрын

John Balce aw thanks

@user-nt4wg5xl8x Жыл бұрын

I’m Russian and I can’t help seeing light and dark blue as completely different colors (even though when I imagine the same with, for example, dark and light green, it sounds ridiculous). the problem is that siniy and goluboy aren’t even simply dark and light blue; goluboy is a warmer shade and generally more saturated. when a blue tone is really cool and soft, I will call it siniy even when it’s light. when a dark blue tone is warm-ish and saturated, I will call it dark goluboy. the only exception is when the color is almost as light or as dark as it gets, then I’ll use the darkness as the only indicator of which color to see it as.

@benfadhiil3443 3 жыл бұрын

Did anyone else think colour names meant colours which are used as names, such as 'Violet' or 'Jade'? (please like so I know it isn't just me)

@user-ec8br1zo2k 3 жыл бұрын

Didn't know that "jade" is a color in your language, I thought it's a character from "Victorious"

@johnnysimpson135 4 жыл бұрын

blue was scarce before the industrial revolution *ignores the sky*

@macaroon_nuggets8008 4 жыл бұрын

No they said before manufacturing

@logandaugherty492 4 жыл бұрын

But it wasn’t important to name the sky really

@Oceaan25 4 жыл бұрын

Yeah, if almost nothing was blue except for the sky you dont have to give that color a name since it's tied to the sky (which everyone would know) and anything with the same color would probably be 'skycolor' or you point up and say "this color".

@Jukajobs 4 жыл бұрын

yeah, but when you only have the sky as a blue thing, you just have your word for "sky" and that's what you use. you don't need a color-word for it. and if you had the ocean or a river that was often blue, it was still only two things, so it made more sense to name those specific things than the color they are. you only need more words for colors when you need to describe things to others, and you wouldn't really have to describe the sky to anyone. and if you wanted to describe a body of water, then you'd focus more on its shape and possibly content (fish, mud, stones, plants, whatever else) than on what water looks like, because most people would already know what water looks like. so one specific word for that color would just seem unnecessary.

@psiphyre 4 жыл бұрын

The sky is always changing colour (depending on the time of day/night & weather, amongst other things) & as such is useless as an archetype for any colour...

@microcosmonauta 7 жыл бұрын

“To the natives, Greenblue is a pure color, primordial almost, undifferentiated by a nature that refuses to divide them. The Aztecs referred to the sea as ‘Celestial Water’ because they pondered that the ‘Green Sea’ melted with the ‘Blue Sky’ across a channel in the horizon.” (Eulalio Ferrer Rodríguez, 2000)

@Manas-co8wl 6 жыл бұрын

In other words it wasn't a color, more like a universal holiness like brightness of light or darkness of night.

@user-ec8br1zo2k 3 жыл бұрын

Ok, I'll tell you something about russian colors. "Color of the baby's surprise", "color of bear ear", "the last breath of Jaco". Russian isn't my native language, but I was surprised how "colorful" it is. I mean, it has plenty of words for describing shades(the ones I showed before were rather humorous, although they do exist).

@louisacoote2337 3 жыл бұрын

As a language nerd/enthusiast and an arty,creative person, I find this fascinating!

@lulicastiglia1 6 жыл бұрын

my mother language isn't english and I've noticed that people use the word blue to describe both a lighter or a darker shade of the same color. In my language we say the word azul (blue) and celeste (light blue). I didn't know there wasn't a different word for those colors so I used to get so mad at people, I was like aRE YOU BLIND OR WHAT

@lulicastiglia1 6 жыл бұрын

also some people say turquoise but is a more specific shade of blue

@HarryBillyBobGeorge 6 жыл бұрын

lour My mother had a car that was sort of a blue-green, and everyone said it was green and that made me really mad.

@mmaantj 6 жыл бұрын

I isually just say dark blue / light blue

@gitanafox9852 6 жыл бұрын

Azul marino (navy blue) as well. But then again, In Spanish there are usually a few different ways of saying something. In my country the color "orange" can also be "mamey" which is also a fruit ^_^

@Adamus984 6 жыл бұрын

in french, and france, especially in elementary school, i learned to distinctively call dark blue : bleu marine, light blue : bleu ciel, and blue (as in middle blue) : bleu, but i think as i mentioned before, it is the same in english, dark blue, light blue, cyan, blue, indigo... etc, its just shades and tones

@Vyrkhan 7 жыл бұрын

I'm color blind but I'm still watching a video about color names for the same color!! :)

@Vyrkhan 7 жыл бұрын

Hilarious!

@simonjohnson4969 7 жыл бұрын

Vyrkhan SAME!

@typhoonzebra 7 жыл бұрын

pro, deutro or tri?

@seabb 7 жыл бұрын

Vyrkhan Can you distinguish colors from eachother?

@hichambekkali8781 7 жыл бұрын

Same here ! I was sure I was not the only one. Ahah

@OrenAjb Жыл бұрын

This is wonderfully edited

@tue3668 Ай бұрын

Thanks for speeading knowledge today ❤

@shepatown 5 жыл бұрын

An infant sees black, white and red initially. Red stands out because of the color of blood - danger. As the cones in the retina of the eyes and the brain synapses develop and process better, then distinct differences in color become apparent when colors of food (fruits, vegetables, meats, grains, nuts, etc.) and associated experiences with those colors are learned. That's why a baby - remembering a sweet purple grape flavored lollipop - may inadvertently place a purple piece of cloth in its mouth. The cones of the retina can distinguish certain frequencies of color. Experience with those frequencies of colors that we process helps us to distinguish between those colors. I remember a study that said seeing the color Pepto-Bismol Pink will help reduce an emotional person's rage (ie: road rage). The reason: Pink is a healthy skin tone color - no red there - so the brains' association of pink goes with calm (no danger). FYI: This info is all conjecture on my part. Just wanted to share what I thought.

@conorly4747 4 жыл бұрын

This needs more likes :)

@nabagaca 4 жыл бұрын

I like this theory, but i doesnt explain why the AI's also picked those colours in that order

@emmylou-ks1md 4 жыл бұрын

That's true, in fact there are prisons where the walls are painted pink because it's believed to be a way to keep inmates calm and avoid fights

@tomatenbomber8830 4 жыл бұрын

Think red warm light is also what you see in the womb

@user-tx5vr2lu6e 4 жыл бұрын

@@nabagaca I think it would be better the other way around - the AI showing that red is more distinctive is a theory as to why we could see it first. After all, babies aren't naming colours

@soundlyawake 5 жыл бұрын

I’m an idiot. It took me 5 minutes into the video to realize this wasn’t about people’s names like Scarlet, Jade, Violet, etc. 😶

@cloudedthought5 3 жыл бұрын

yeah, same! Straight up thought that

@IndellableHatesHandles 3 жыл бұрын

Huh?

@jillfanning749 3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, I thought that that was what this was about too

@privaterizk4936 3 жыл бұрын

@@IndellableHatesHandles Read this comment again, then read the title of this video.

@Kromiball 3 жыл бұрын

I don't understand how you would mess that up.

@therese8958 3 жыл бұрын

I'm glad my country was mentioned especially that we have a lot of languages and I want to explore more of it. Indeed, we are diverse in all aspect but that makes us colorful :')

@redgamer4452 2 жыл бұрын

In my native language German due to originating in the germanic realm most words are closely linked to nature Green : Grün (from the germanic word "ghro" meaning to grow or blossom ) Blue: Blau ( old middle German "blao" shiny and shimmery ) Red : Rot ( germanic "rauðaż " derived from the words copper, gold , metal ) Yellow : Gelb (germanic "gelo meaning more or less the exact same thing as blue ) Black : Schwarz (germanic "blach " meaning dark ) White : Weiß (germanic " wiz " colorless, shiny )

@willg3376 6 жыл бұрын

Yay I love being color blind watching a video about colors

@oli.4409 6 жыл бұрын

William Genitempo I have a question, you know how some stuff people say they taste "green" (idk how to formulate my question so I hope you get where I am trying to go)

@bigboy6191 6 жыл бұрын

They have a new glass you can use to see colours

@Ggdivhjkjl 6 жыл бұрын

@William, same here mate! @green alien, those glasses are more a way of tricking the eyes and brain. They can't actually rectify the internal problem which is due to the shape of the cones in one's eyes.

@FireflyJuu 5 жыл бұрын

Livie It's called synesthesia

@NovaStorm93 5 жыл бұрын

Person: Tells someone they are colorblind 95% of people: *points to an object * *what color is this???* 5% Oh cool

@bahbcat 6 жыл бұрын

Red is Nature's warning color. Survival makes it most important.

@bahbcat 6 жыл бұрын

I'm intending to show insects and plants tell you, and snakes and frogs too, don't eat me color is red.

@Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh 6 жыл бұрын

nature evolved to have red as a warning BECAUSE it is so widely perceived by animals and humans, not the other way around!

@bahbcat 6 жыл бұрын

Works both ways. Evolution is not a "because" thing. You cannot prove a direction because there isn't any. It IS widely perceived because animals that used it as warning and those who perceived the warning "agreed" that it works. The ability to create red is what made it a useable pigment. 3 perceivable colors (cones on retina). Green would not work, becasuse of chlorophyl. Blue would not work because of light scattering in atmospshere, and reflecting in water (etc). Red got used because the others would not work.

@isabelhuang_1 6 жыл бұрын

Ok but what about the computers?

@Ggdivhjkjl 6 жыл бұрын

As a colourblind man, I see your two 'red' berries and eat the brown one ;)

@Amarcordons 2 жыл бұрын

Great video ! Indeed it's interesting to see that in French, the color names switch to comparisons to material things after the six main colors (+ grey/"gris") : brown : "marron" = some kind of chesnut with a deep brown shell pink : "rose" = like the flower burgundy : "bordeaux" = like the wine from the city of Bordeaux purple : "violet" = like the viola flower (violette in French) orange : "orange" = like the fruit and so on

@jellymcmichaels4240 Жыл бұрын

Most of these words sound like their Spanish counterparts...

@babuanandh1732 3 жыл бұрын

In tamil language we have 7 distinct color names வெள்ளை(vellai)- white கருப்பு(karuppu)-black சிகப்பு(sivappu)- red நீலம்(neelam)- blue பழுப்பு( pazhuppu)- brown மஞ்சள்( manjal)- yellow பச்சை(pachai)-green Other colours names called with objects like colour of ash and some colours got name from the 7 main colours like இளஞ்சிவப்பு( ilanjivappu)-pink

@brandon-wn8by 5 жыл бұрын

we all know the elements dark light and mostly red

@Sataka23clips 5 жыл бұрын

comunism

@plutoporn 5 жыл бұрын

Moist red

@welp4576 5 жыл бұрын

red

@pppoopoo69 5 жыл бұрын

-Which direction are you moving? -Yes

@goldaria9228 5 жыл бұрын

That’s why red is the best

@belgiffle2260 4 жыл бұрын

So i just dyed my brown hair purple and blue, *it's called kpe*

@xelly1299 4 жыл бұрын

Kappa

@kookieslambskewer3151 2 жыл бұрын

i didnt know colors would be so interesting... I feel like color schemes and choices of colors to name them are greatly different depending on the culture and the use of color throughout history. i especially love the beautiful japanese color schemes and the traditional names they have!

@angelicaoliver4915 3 жыл бұрын

This was a really cool video. Thanks so much

@ari2644 4 жыл бұрын

humans : create names for colors also humans : y did we create these names for these colors

@karaqakkzl 3 жыл бұрын

My dog: I only can see 4 colors, hooman -_-

@uprktk 3 жыл бұрын

We just forgot it while we've been doing it

@ileanek4565 7 жыл бұрын

Guys, you mixed up Siniy and Goluboy on Russian scheme. They should switch places. Source: am from Russia Edit: Vox fixed it up!

@nedisahonkey 7 жыл бұрын

Cheeki breeki?

@kiky.mp4 7 жыл бұрын

cyka blyat?

@ileanek4565 7 жыл бұрын

Ned Gold i v damki?

@nedisahonkey 7 жыл бұрын

Ileane Against The Wall Marry me? You'd fit in perfectly in my town that is like over half Russian or Ukrainian.

@saamohod 7 жыл бұрын

Ты из Бурятии?

@richa980 2 жыл бұрын

In english too, we have words which describe both a colour and a feeling (though it’s a colloquial use) like I’m feeling blue

@anothermuslima Жыл бұрын

Babies would most times reach out to a red toy, and IU've seen family members distract crying babies with red toys or items. When I asked, they would always say that red is the most catchy colour. Even though new born babies can't see colours that well, they'd still react to red the most.

@tatemartinis1262 7 жыл бұрын

When your colorblind and you have no idea what they're talking about.

@robiniekiller45 7 жыл бұрын

Hehe

@fex144 7 жыл бұрын

Tate; First came dark gray, then light gray. Then gray blood, gray dirt and, then gray wheat, until at the end we come to the frilly gray of princess dresses. Easy.

@Poilko666 6 жыл бұрын

fex144 Im pretty sure that color blind people still see some colors and not only gray

@ulilulable 6 жыл бұрын

When your cant spell and need to use their grammar. :p

@88marome 6 жыл бұрын

There are many different types and degrees of colour blindness. People with monochromatic vision can only see shades of gray.

@maddie-bw5ue 7 жыл бұрын

You should do a video similar to this about what other languages define as emotions

@nightwitch36 3 жыл бұрын

one of my favorite videos of all time

@sivad1025 6 жыл бұрын

I love how the "Blue wasn't common before manufacturing" line has incited many comments. But all of them reference the sky and sea (which is ironically colorless). I think this unintentionally proves his point seeing we can only come up with two things.

@IsomerMashups 5 жыл бұрын

But those two things are everywhere.

@leonardodavinci4259 5 жыл бұрын

@@IsomerMashups Yes, and things that are everywhere, like oxygen, fade into the background. For a color to be deserving of a name, it needs to manifest itself in as many *distinct* objects it can.

@girlgamer4444 5 жыл бұрын

@@leonardodavinci4259 what? Except when you look up you can see the blue of what we call sky and you can't see oxygen. Oxygen doesn't fade into the background because it's everywhere, it fades into the background because you can't detect it with your eyes.

@leonardodavinci4259 5 жыл бұрын

@@girlgamer4444 Fair point. My analogue was perhaps lacking. Thought I believe my point still stands.

@girlgamer4444 5 жыл бұрын

@@leonardodavinci4259 yea your point was fair but adding a stupid example can make the whole argument seem stupid.

@joseantonioortizsanchezpri1931 4 жыл бұрын

1:40 Color "Hierarchy" 3:46 Color-object comparison 4:02 Hanuno'o color spectrum 4:28 Berlin and Kay universal map of color

@lindseyrhone1407 2 жыл бұрын

😇💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓👨‍🎓😋

@lindseyrhone1407 2 жыл бұрын

567890ffbgggggbhh b gggyfr5 f Dr tddrr

@lindseyrhone1407 2 жыл бұрын

Andrlk

@doctordoctor7469 Жыл бұрын

As a neurologist there is a reason. We have cones and rods. Rods make up the majority and are light to dark sensors. Cones only detect red, green, and blue. These likely contribute or at least make the decision not arbitrary. The significance of colors matters as well as “dark orange” is brown, but unlike many colors where light and dark match similar objects, orange and brown have less overlap.

@jasonomo 2 жыл бұрын

I'm native in Hungarian and so many times i got into the problem of English not having a name for the colour "bordó" which is like a brownish-redish shade and we often use it so it was very bothering to just call it "red" when in my mind red is nothing like it.

@denpadolt9242 6 жыл бұрын

The fascinating thing about this is that even before humans, you can find signs of colour hierarchy. For instance, the bacteria in the "The sun is a deadly lazer" times of Earth could detect different "colours" with primitive light-sensitive chemicals. The bacteria also knew only two colours: Light, which meant danger, and dark, which meant safety.

@thegivingtree887 6 жыл бұрын

Waddle Derp THE SUN IS A DEADLY LASER

@lucaswhitfield718 6 жыл бұрын

Can we go on land? NO. why not? THE SUN IS A DEADLY LASER.

@lucifer4263 6 жыл бұрын

Lucas Whitfield Not anymore, there‘s a blanket.

@Mernom 5 жыл бұрын

That's not really color sensitivity, but general light sensitivity.

@stan_dinghere 5 жыл бұрын

thast so wild how do the scientists know this?? did they go back n ask??

@jamiemackay9517 7 жыл бұрын

Yo, vox. Kenya ain't Tanzania.

@mad3ko 7 жыл бұрын

Jamie Mackay noticed that too (3:40)

@Luigi-hb5td 7 жыл бұрын

Jamie Mackay those fools got confused on my country

@infinitystudyabroadisa1763 7 жыл бұрын

Jamie Mackay, thank you for noticing that + they highlighted the Tanzanian map too, SMDH!

@infinitystudyabroadisa1763 7 жыл бұрын

Jamie Mackay, thank you for noticing that + they highlighted the Tanzanian map too, SMDH!

@falnica 7 жыл бұрын

Those countries are fairly industrialized

@TernaryM01 3 жыл бұрын

3:44 CORRECTION: The Indonesian language is called "Bahasa Indonesia" in Indonesian and "Indonesian" in English. The word "bahasa" simply means "language".

@Moodboard39 4 ай бұрын

They gets things wrong in Indonesia lol

@GambSa 3 жыл бұрын

How do you guys make these animations? They’re so beautiful.

@hod-avb 4 жыл бұрын

In Turkish the color “brown” is said “the color of coffee”

@mimikal7548 4 жыл бұрын

Maybe the people who did the survey were from those locations?

@djarmy1994 4 жыл бұрын

In Mexico too.

@logandaugherty492 4 жыл бұрын

I wonder which came first for orange in English: the fruit or the color?

@jennyarachovity5404 4 жыл бұрын

in greek too

@bngbng4068 4 жыл бұрын

I'm Bulgarian and in our language It works in the same way - ''kafyavo'' (lit. ''coffee-like''). Albanian seems to do It too. It's the Balkan sprachbund in action.

@eggman37 4 жыл бұрын

Me: 'art student who has spent years learning colours and colour theory" *WELP* "throws out paint"

@gorillaglued 3 жыл бұрын

black is a nice colour huh?

@Delgen1951 2 жыл бұрын

@@gorillaglued Black and white goes with most things.

@teplapus8795 2 жыл бұрын

0:24 "Purpurniy" is a word, but it's barely used. We usually call purple "Fioletoviy". Purpurniy is magenta.

@rabahelaawar2499 3 жыл бұрын

It is بني not بنى for brown in Arabic. I noticed this mistake and wished to highlight it. بنى (buna or binna, i.e. structures) and بني (bunni, i.e. brown) are written and pronounced differently, and they mean differently too.

@heyitsalex99 7 жыл бұрын

'red is fundamentally more different than the others' more like humans/mammals have evolved to easily notice the colour red as noticing blood is kinda important...

@THELASTMASTA 7 жыл бұрын

John keppelman But do you associate that directly with the color or with things that are that color?

@Dragoniiia 7 жыл бұрын

@John keppelman well... you actually agreed. Red is not different than any other wavelength, it's our psyche that make it "different". .... mostly because blood is red.

@eve36368 7 жыл бұрын

John keppelman that's way too social... but still some of it seems salvageable.

@neke989 6 жыл бұрын

That's what I thought too, but even the simulated computer populations came up with a word for red first! I need to look into those studies/results more, but I'm assuming that they didn't have the same biological or evolutionary circumstances programmed in...

@elyssatruman1292 6 жыл бұрын

red is also a pretty common warning color in nature

@00droo00 6 жыл бұрын

青 means both “blue” and “green” in Japanese. In the olden days it was used interchangeably, but nowadays 青 tends to mean blue and 緑 green. However they still describe stop lights today as 青 rather than 緑

@MrMoOomoOo91 5 жыл бұрын

Seriously dude? Did you thought for a moment that we can understand these things?

@UnmereMortal 5 жыл бұрын

Because ao or blue has less syllables then midori or green. So it’s kind of a short cut. You ask any person what color is this with a picture of green they will say midori and never ever say ao. If you show them blue and ask what color it is they will always say ao. It’s a shortcut.

@stevejohnston3194 5 жыл бұрын

NHK TV in Japan in the :Choko-san in Shikareta" program broadcast last week explained WHY 青 means both “blue” and “green” in Japanese in traffic lights. This comes from a single newspaper article describing the first stop light in Japan, located in Hibiya, central Tokyo. The newspaper article stated that the color was 青 (blue). In those days the photos were all black-white, so nobody knew the difference, and the general public repeated what they were told, that traffic lights included the color blue. Somehow this has continued to this day, even though everyone knows that the color is green. You see similar cultural attributes for the color of the sun, which some cultures describe as "red" (Japan and Russia, for example), some describe as "yellow" (US and England, for example), and many describe as "white". Human eyes are adapted for sunlight, so the light of the sun a noon naturally is seen as "white", but the official color changes according to culture.

@OP-lk4tw 5 жыл бұрын

I don't get it, what's the point of naming two different colors the same? Confusing people or what? The sky and the grass doesn't have the same color, therefore the sky and the grass shouldn't be named as 青 when referring to the color.

@OP-lk4tw 5 жыл бұрын

Oh I read your comment now, so it all comes from a missunderstanding..

@adamteso 3 жыл бұрын

this is so fascinating

@Hallows4 3 жыл бұрын

Much of the information in this video is explained in more detail in the books "The Secret Lives of Color" by Kassia St. Clair and "On Color" by David Scott Kastan and Stephen Farthing. I would recommend both.