Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Colors

I don't have the reference but I recall an article from a language study
about the names that colors have and the fact that different languages have
not always divided the color spectrum up the same way.

Normally I lurk, but since a linguistics question came up, I would
like to add that the results found that people can distinguish
different colors even if they don't have names for them.

Almost all people with normal color vision will distinguish
fire-engine red as a distinct color as well as other 'basic' colors
such as blue and green, even the language does not distinguish them.
Where the languages differ is in where boundaries between different
color families are drawn.

To take a lagnuage family I know of, older Celtic languages
originally had one term for blue/green, that is "glas" However my
instructors have reported that there has always been distinctions
between the 'glas' of the sea (blue) and the 'glas' of grass (green).
Also, almost all the Celtic languages now have a term for green
(taken from Latin) which is used in catalogs and elsewhere for
English 'green'. This does suggest that to me anyway that people are
making similar responses to similar visual input.

Also as a sticher, I would think that since similar color
combinations are used often and are considered pleasing that most
people are in fact reacting the same way to the same wavelengths. If
blue and red were radically different for everyone, I'm not sure the
combination of red and blue would be pleasing for everyone. Yet 'red'
and 'blue' is considered to be a very classic color combination.

Just my two cents there.

Elizabeth







_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com


--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Elizabeth J. Pyatt, Ph.D.
Instructional Designer
Education Technology Services
Penn State University
ejp10@psu.edu, (814) 865-0805

228A Computer Building
University Park, PA 16801
http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10