Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2008 March 16

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March 16

Colour perception: what differences can language make?

I was reading about how different languages differentiate colours at different places on the spectrum, a common one is how many languages do have have a different word for blue and green. So is it possible that the speakers of these languages will not notice the difference between a blue and green card unless pointed out beacause of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.240.203.201 (talk) 01:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about not noticing that difference. Cyan (█) and navy (█) are pretty intensely different, and yet I think both of them are blue. That's why there are extra words that we add, like "sky" or "robin's egg" versus "dark" or "midnight". From what I hear, the Japanese used to disambiguate blue and green in the same way: blue was aoi like the sky and green was aoi like the grass. --Masamage ♫ 01:35, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

A good starting point is WP's excellent article Color, Anonymous.

Now, in English and most other European languages we nearly always call red (█) and pink (█) by different names. Are red things and pink things the same colour, but different shades? Objectively, we might say yes. But the language pushes us to say no. Are dark green things (█) and light green things (█) the same colour, but different shades? The objective situation is the same as with red and pink, but in this case our language supports that objective fact. See? Look at the greenery in a garden. You say it's green. Look at parts of the same scene in autumn, and you might say it's red and pink. Hmmm. Are we perceiving differently, in a way influenced by that linguistic difference? Many say we are.

That's the situation with shades (by which I have meant different saturations), when we are exposed to light of the same spectral mix except diluted with different amounts of "white" light (roughly, light of uniform distribution across the visible spectrum). Similar things can indeed be said about distinguishing blues (as a group) from greens (as a group), etc. Quite striking! Distinctions can certainly be made by all comers, but some distinctions are more salient and easy than others, it appears, depending on whether those different groups are named differently or not.

Much more could be said. There is a huge literature on this.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 01:58, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

After reading your explanation, for the first time ever, I agree with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. HYENASTE 02:22, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The Australian national colours are a quite specific green and gold. But as far as the populace is concerned, any old green and any old gold will do - not because we can't distinguish various shades of green or gold but because our language is deficient in failing to provide separate names for all the possible spectral shades of green or gold. But is it really a deficiency? Do we really need all these separate names? We can get more descriptive whenever we really need to (dark green, light green, yellowy green, lime green, bottle green, olive green etc), but mostly we don't need this level of specification. We have no separate names for dark blue vs. light blue, whereas Russian does - sinyi and goluboy respectively - and they fail to have what we consider a must: a general word for "blue". How can they possibly get by with no single word for "blue"? But they seem to have managed. They might well ask "How can those silly anglophones possibly get by without distinguishing sinyi from goluboy?" But we seem to have managed as well. -- JackofOz (talk) 02:44, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

In languages which lump blue and green under one color word, the prototype of that color is still either blue or green, depending on the language. In Japan, traffic lights are red, yellow, and blue. I wonder if that's due to translating 'green' as aoi back in the Meiji Era, and the prototypical aoi being blue. — kwami (talk) 06:07, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

When a Japanese painter mixes blue paint with yellow paint to produce green paint, how does he distinguish between the blue and the green when talking about what he's just done? -- JackofOz (talk) 06:41, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Modernly, he just calls the green midori. But in the past (I mentioned this above) I'm told they just said stuff like "aoi of the sky" and "aoi of grass". And yeah, I've wondered that about the traffic lights, too. --Masamage ♫ 07:20, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

You assume that English colors are basic. If an English painter mixes red paint with orange paint, how does he distinguish the results? It's not that languages don't have ways of expressing color, only that they have different basic color words. — kwami (talk) 08:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Does anyone else notice variation within a language? What I consider red extends well into most people's perception of orange and brown. I just Googled red-orange, and found that I considered almost all of those items inarguably red. I also own a red chicken that everyone else labels brown. HYENASTE 08:34, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

That's not uncommon, but I bet your pure red or best red is very close to what other people consider pure red. People vary a lot more on the margins. — kwami (talk) 09:36, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I think the Chinese see colors like what Anglophones do. We also call cyan as "blue-green" and navy blue "navy-blue". We simply put colors as dark or light or describe more obscure colors like what Anglophones do (I mean, at least like in English). But if we come across hazel, most people would just say 'brown'.

I think natives (I mean, not overseas ones) would have more difficulty describing how different peoples look like. I never knew Nicole Kidman was a redhead until I read about the red hair in this Wikipedia. I thought her hair was fairly 'brown', or 'hazel' in English; I found it hard to distinguish between brown and hazel and strawberry red (hair). I do see people's hair or eyes have different shades of colors. Yet, we say a redhead is a 'red haired person', or a blonde a 'golden haired person', but we don't have 'redhead' and 'blonde'. We don't have a word for 'brunette', either. Any shades of red or golden or brown hair are just red, golden and brown. The dozens of words Anglophones can use for hair and eye colors don't exist in Chinese at all. We only have the simplest colors to call those physical traits.

The same goes for skin colors. We think two of the main peoples are white and black as you think, but we don't have the word for 'brown people' - I mean, if a non-Asian people is neither white nor black, we'd only know their nation, like 'Brazilian' (when Brazil is rather ethnically diverse, which not many of us have knowledge of). We know that Arabs, Indians, Thais, Indonesians and Mongolians look different, but then we have no words rather than just 'Asian' or their nationalities. It seems like 'yellow' has become something very negative in the Western culture, but then many of us still call ourselves 'yellow people'. In general, many don't think there is anything wrong with calling most Asian peoples as 'yellow' (or Asian, of course).--Fitzwilliam (talk) 12:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you know if 'yellow' has anything to do with Chinese Imperial Yellow, or is that just coincidence? — kwami (talk) 18:30, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Don't know about that, but a Vietnamese friend of mine says that "blue" and "green" are said the same way. Odd. --~~MusicalConnoisseur~~ Got Classical? 18:57, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

In case nobody was clear on this; no matter what, language will not affect someone's perception of colors. Everyone (provided they don't have some sort of color blindness) will be able to tell the difference between similar colors that they don't have words for. The language's treatment of colors might have an impact on their attitude, memory, and description (which is sort of obvious) but not in how they see it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:38, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

As the perception of colour is a qualia (or probably a qualium ?) this last statement is, at least, not verifiable.

If I (a native speaker of German), were to perceive the grass to be blue and the sky to be green this personal sensation would never be noticed by anybody. As people call the sky blue and the grass green I would simply apply the term blue to what I see as green and the term green to what to me is blue.

And if I were to paint a landscape I would, of course, use MY proper blue for the trees. That everybody else calls it green is not my business.

So much for communication. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 23:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

For Latin lovers: quale is the singular, qualia the plural. Oops. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 00:01, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I was referring to the question on whether the ability of one's eyes to distinguish colors is affected by language. It is not. This ability is very much verifiable and if I recall correctly has been studied by researchers. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:32, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

My speculation: yellow might be considered a homophone of 皇 (meaning empire). The Qin kings and Qin Shi Huang believed that BLACK was lucky for some reasons. I'm not sure, but at least for Qin Shi Huang after he unified China, he thought that black represented the WATER element which he believed to represent the Qin power. It was a unique era when black was regarded the royal color. In later eras, YELLOW was a symbol for the dragon (the golden dragon) and especially for the Manchu emperors. During the Qing Dynasty, yellow was the royal color and only the royal family members could wear in yellow. It's notable, though, that I can see people like Song emperors wearing in RED instead. Yellow isn't, at least, the only royal color for ALL the dynasties. I can only say yellow is one of the lucky colors in the Chinese culture (one other being red).

In contemporary eras, yellow is more like a symbol of identity. While yellow connotations might have become offensive (I mean, the Mongoloid ones), people still feel it is alright to consider themselves yellow people, but this has nothing to do with empire anymore.--Fitzwilliam (talk) 13:54, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles. University of California Press, 1969. Berlin and Kay presented a hypothesis (which certainly works generally, if not completely) that certain colour terms are more likely to appear than others when only small numbers of basic colour terms are present in a language. Off the top of my head there are languages (in PNG) that have only two basic colour terms. They have no problem telling the colours apart, but don't have consistent basic terms for them. Rather there are referential terms (the colour of a tiger, the colour of the sky and so on). When there are more colour terms added, the progression of which colour terms are added first can be predicted to an extent. Black, White, Red and Yellow are some of the first, then Blue, Green, Brown, Orange, Pink, Grey, and then Light/Dark Blue (as in Russian or Spanish). Steewi (talk) 00:46, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if this has been mentioned but our article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language) on the subject of distinguishing those colorus across languages is quite indepth and interesting. ny156uk (talk) 17:47, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Strength/weakness: one word

Please see Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous#Strength/weakness: one word87.102.75.250 (talk) 10:16, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Check if principle of double effect (Thomas Aquinas) is useful to you. It is closely related to ambivalence, which was already offered to you as an option. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 17:00, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

You might want to have a look at Niels Bohr's notion of profound truth as in this quote "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." 200.127.59.151 (talk) 17:03, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify, the principle of double effect is very close to what I'm looking for (thank you for the link!), but 'ambivalence' is not. --Masamage ♫ 17:27, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Is Uruguay unique?

I occasionally suffer from insomnia (it's a hallmark of genius, apparently), and I've been sitting here since 3:37 a.m., wondering if there's any other English word apart from Uruguay (ignoring Uruguayan) in which the same vowel appears 3 times and is pronounced in 3 different ways (yoo in the first syllable; oo in the second; w in the third). Oh, I know some people pronounce the first syllable "oo", but I'm giving "yoo" all my attention.  :)

Damn it, as I was typing the foregoing I just thought of another one - extreme (counting the silent e at the end as a separate pronunciation). (Which makes my header kind of redundant now, but it's eye-catching so I think I'll just leave it.) There must be others. Any ideas? -- JackofOz (talk) 18:21, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like someone's got a case of the 'holism... Don't worry, there's treatment. Here's my offering: Catalonian. According to the AHD, the first a is a long vowel, the second is tripped over (moving straight fom the t to the l), and the third is pronounced /ɘ/. --~~MusicalConnoisseur~~ Got Classical? 18:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Fairly remote and sparrow´s fart time at 7 AM, but how about AustrAliA ? --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 19:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

(ec) I'm with the OED on that one (at least for my accent): Catalonian has one /æ/ and two schwas. If you're counting silent Es, then extremeness has four in one word. More threes plucked from the OED at random: catalase, archipelagian, fertilization and various similar words. Algebraist 20:10, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Approaching this from the opposite direction, I think Uruguay is technically pronounced oo-roog-why, at least by the people who live there (and for some reason by me; I don't know why that should be). What you list is the standard Americanized/Australianized pronunciation (my husband says it that way, even), but is mispronouncing something from another language all it takes for it to count as English and be useful to this puzzle? Because if so, that makes it a lot easier. :) --Masamage ♫ 20:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

icebreaker is another one; immobilization might have four for some speakers.

While we're talking about Uruguay, is this the only Spanish word that has the dipthhong /wai/ that isn't a second person verbal conjugation? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:34, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, there's Paraguay. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 21:10, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

True. Not sure if I should include those at Spanish phonology, though. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:23, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

(reindent) Ƶ§œš is asking for occurences of the triphthong uai in Spanish. Apart from common instances of the second person (plural), and the two afore-mentioned countries, I can only remember the interjection guay. Pallida  Mors 03:07, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't class Yoo-roog-why as a mispronunciation, Masamage. In Spanish, yes, but not in English. It's a normal (and, I suspect, the predominant) pronunciation among anglophones. We say "France" different from the way the Frenchies do; we say "Mexico" different from the way the Mexicans do; etc. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:22, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow your phonetic spelling. Do you mean you pronounce it /'jurugwaɪ/? I can't remember ever hearing anything other than /'jʊərəgwaɪ/ in England. Algebraist 21:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC) corrected stress

Are you saying you pronounce it with 4 syllables, and the stress on the final syallable? I have never heard it said that way, and can see no justification for it. The first version you gave, but with the stress on the first syllable - /'jurugwaɪ/ - is how I say it. Or maybe /'jurəgwaɪ/ would be closer. -- JackofOz (talk) 22:33, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

No, that's three syllables (I had the stress mark wrong though. oops!): the dipthong of tour, then a schwa, then the vowel of eye. Algebraist 01:24, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm, all a bit confusing. When you say "the diphthong of tour", I read that to mean the double sound u-ə (sort of), which to my ears is 2 syllables. If you say you only count it as 1 syllable, I'm not sure how it's distinguishable from the plain u (IPA). -- JackofOz (talk) 01:39, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

No one pronounces it "yoo-roo-gwai" in English. My dictionary suggests /jʊərəgwʌɪ/, and that's pretty close to how I say it.Paul Davidson (talk) 01:44, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I checked out IPA before I answered Algebraist's post, and it seems diphthongs are marked with a superscripted second symbol. If a symbol is not superscripted, it's pronounced separately from the ones on either side. Can anyone explain where I'm going wrong in my understanding of this? (We really need a video-conferencing facility for these sorts of questions; the written word is sometimes hopelessly inadequate.) -- JackofOz (talk) 01:54, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Could you give an example of a diphthong being written as a vowel+superscript? I've never seen that, and I think this is where your confusion might come from. HYENASTE 02:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, scrub the superscript idea (I must have read something too quickly and got the wrong impression). I've now boned up on diphthongs and their IPA representations. Maybe it's just my unique way of saying things, but for the life of me I cannot hear any diphthong in the opening syllable of Uruguay. The example of ʊə in the diphthong article is the word "lure". There's no way that sound is present in my pronunciation of Uruguay, or that of anyone else I've ever heard. "Uruguay a land" rhymes exactly with "You require land" and would be a perfect mondegreen. Would anyone represent the latter expression starting with /jʊərə-/?-- JackofOz (talk) 06:25, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually, superscripts are sometimes used for diphthongs, but I've only seen them for falling diphthongs (eye [a^j] etc.). Ideally, IPA diacritics modify the sound of a base letter, and as an extension of this, you may superscript any symbol to modify an adjacent one. So [t^ʃ] for the ch sound, especially if you have reason to think of it as a kind of t (as in Japanese), and the same for diphthongs. But it's not particularly common. — kwami (talk) 07:18, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

As for Spanish uai, I notice it only seems to follow /g/. Maybe this isn't a triphthong /uai/, but a diphthong /ai/ following a consonant /gw/? /kw/ and /gw/ are common in European languages, and /kw/ is often cognate with /hw/ ([ʍ]) in English. — kwami (talk) 07:28, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

If I understand the way Spanish works correctly, [w] and [j] are only present as vowel nuclei. That's certainly how they're analyzed in the sources at our Spanish phonology page. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 09:43, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Yep. Uai is one of the triphthongs of Spanish, in line with what I posted above. Anyway, w in gw is a semiconsonant, so distinction between consonantic or vocalic sounds in this scheme is not strightforward.

By the way, -guai is not the only phonetic group in which this "triphthong" appears. Cf. licuáis, actuáis, etc. Incidentally, u looks more consonantic to me in triphthongs following a voiced consonant (i. e. Uruguay, buey) rather than a mute one (actuáis). Pallida  Mors 17:00, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

"Haha, look at this country - You Are Gay!" (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) Adam Bishop (talk) 07:38, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I submit the word "Panama". As pronounced in Amercian English, it's pænəma, although in Spanish the vowels should all be pronounced the same. Thomprod (talk) 22:44, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Very nice, Thomprod. And "Panamanian", and "Mandalay" and probably lots of others. How silly of me not to even consider "Australia" (thanks, Cookatoo) - however there's more than one way to say it, and it does depend on which version you choose. Normally, I use schwas at the start and the finish. But if I say it carefully it comes out as "Os-trail-ya", which qualifies. Maybe a shorter list would be one with words with 4 different pronunciations of the same vowel letter, of which Algebraist's "extremeness" is a good example. Maybe for another time, though. -- JackofOz (talk) 01:59, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I would like to go on record as protesting the inclusion of Australia, because the sound of first syllable is comes from the Au diphthong, not just from the A ("no I never heard it at all, till there was U.") --LarryMac | Talk 15:22, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

True, it is a diphthong, although its pronunciation varies widely. (Afaik, the only people who start the pronunciation of Australia like "author" or "Audrey" are stereotypical upper-class Britons, who may hardly even exist anymore. I think the Queen says it like that. When we Aussies say it slowly, it's "Oss-" (as in ossify), that's as far as we go towards "correctness"; spoken quickly, it's "Əs'".) But the fact remains that the letter group includes the letter A, and its pronunciation can vary from those of the other 2 "a"s. Your protest has been noted, and will be held against you in forthcoming legal proceedings.  :) -- JackofOz (talk) 10:07, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

I think Canada follows the same pattern, although I'd say that's /ʌ/ as the last vowel in "Canada", and the last vowel in Panama can be /ʌ/ or /ɑ/. Paul Davidson (talk) 14:45, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

As a means _____

Is there a preferred preposition after "as a means..." (i.e., to, of, etc.) or are they pretty much equivalent? Thanks. Imagine Reason (talk) 21:15, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

It depends on the rest of the sentence as to which prep you'd use, and they're not interchangeable.

• As a means to an end, this proposal sucks.
• As a means of getting to an end, it still sucks. -- JackofOz (talk) 21:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The phrase

• a means to ..." will generally be followed by a noun, whilst
• a means of ..." is followed by a gerund. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 23:31, 16 March 2008 (UTC)