If a colour has no name, do we see it?

[Fragile Bird]

This sounds like that tricky question, if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?

It turns out many ancient - in fact, not so ancient - languages have no word for the colour blue. A scholar named William Gladstone, back in 1858, noticed that there were some very strange descriptions of objects in The Odyssey.

In the Odyssey, Homer famously describes the "wine-dark sea." But why "wine-dark" and not deep blue or green?

In 1858, a scholar named William Gladstone, who later became the Prime Minister of Great Britain, noticed that this wasn't the only strange color description. Though the poet spends page after page describing the intricate details of clothing, armor, weaponry, facial features, animals, and more, his references to color are strange. Iron and sheep are violet, honey is green.

So Gladstone decided to count the color references in the book. And while black is mentioned almost 200 times and white around 100, other colors are rare. Red is mentioned fewer than 15 times, and yellow and green fewer than 10. Gladstone started looking at other ancient Greek texts, and noticed the same thing there was never anything described as "blue." The word didn't even exist.

Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2#ixzz3T90CsDST Thank-you, Odie, for posting that on facebook!

It's a fascinating idea. Did the Greeks live in a mainly black and white world, because they really didn't notice colours?

[Arkhangel]

This is a very famous example of what you're talking about.

It's always very tempting to draw direct links between what people experience or understand, and what language is capable of expressing. As someone with a linguistics degree who loves language, I've still got to point out its limits. Just because they didn't express or reference colours in a specific context and through a specific medium under specific norms of communication certainly doesn't mean that the ancient Greeks did not see colours.

[Fragile Bird]

This is a very famous example of what you're talking about.

It's always very tempting to draw direct links between what people experience or understand, and what language is capable of expressing. As someone with a linguistics degree who loves language, I've still got to point out its limits. Just because they didn't express or reference colours in a specific context and through a specific medium under specific norms of communication certainly doesn't mean that the ancient Greeks did not see colours.

Can't see the program, it's blocked here, but did you read my link? It doesn't seem like it... :)

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[sj4iy]

Yes. Just because a culture uses the same name to describe more than one color doesn't mean that they can't distinguish between them...typically, they find ways to distinguish between the shades in other ways. It's sort of like the cultures that have more than one name for 'snow'...just because our culture doesn't, we still find ways to describe different kinds of snow by saying things like 'wet snow' or 'dry snow' or 'soft snow', etc. Just because we didn't use different terms to describe them doesn't mean we can't distinguish between the different variations of snow.

[Woofless]

Here's another, even more famous example, that illustrates the point.

[Kikajon]

I believe that us the most discussed line of the entire poem isn't it?

To make some sense of it I always imagined how is the sea in certain sunsets in summer, when the sun fills the waters with all sorts of colours, red, violet, golden and the sea is not transparent like water any more, looks more dense, like wine..

I know it may be too simplistic but when I see such sunsets I can't help thinking at that famous line.

[Gertrude]

It's a fascinating idea. Did the Greeks live in a mainly black and white world, because they really didn't notice colours?

Nah. They went out of their way to paint their statuary bright colors.

[Kelli Fury]

Everybody, read the article, I think some of you are missing a lot of the evidence contained therein

[The Iceman of the North]

There are plenty of shades of green that have particular names that I don't know, but that does not mean that I can't distinguish between them, thus the answer to the OP question is yes.

[Gertrude]

Everybody, read the article, I think some of you are missing a lot of the evidence contained therein

I guess maybe I'm not understanding what FB means by black and white world then. Obviously there was color and they noticed it. But if a culture doesn't bother to distinguish blue from green, or just uses dark/light to describe colors then I would think it's not important to them. If a culture goes to the trouble of re-creating colors to use prominently in their art, then wouldn't it be important enough to name? Maybe it was only important in certain circles (artists/priests?) and was a specialized trade language that spread?

I can't find it now, but I just read an article that talks about colors and the names for them. One language (maybe Russian?) has separate names for blue and light blue, and it points out that we do the same for red (red/pink).

eta: Oh hey - found it. It was youtube clip not an article and he's talking about exactly what the article talks about. He even mentions the Greeks and how they use light/dark as the main qualifier.

[maarsen]

I have been asked enough times for it to be statistically significant, "What colour are your eyes? I can't figure it out." For the record I say when asked that they are bluish-grayish-green. With gold flecks. Back to Homer. While out on a catamaran in Cuba, the colour of the ocean would change from the turquoise we all know, when close to shore, to the deepest blue, but not purple, when in deep waters, that I have ever seen. What came to mind was that this was 'the wine dark sea' of Homer.

[Summah]

I think the link in the OP is taking linguistic relativity too far.

[Jo498]

Literally it is "wine-faced" sea (oinos + ops). So it might refer to a more general impression, including reflections etc. (cf. what Maarsen writes above).

As we all are used to describe pinkish skin as "white" (like fresh snow?)and brownish as "black" we should not be so surprised that word usage does not match the actual color very well. No linguistic relativity follows as everyone will probably be able to distinguish the skin color of a pale-faced caucasian from the color of white paper or snow.

[Fragile Bird]

Yes. Just because a culture uses the same name to describe more than one color doesn't mean that they can't distinguish between them...typically, they find ways to distinguish between the shades in other ways. It's sort of like the cultures that have more than one name for 'snow'...just because our culture doesn't, we still find ways to describe different kinds of snow by saying things like 'wet snow' or 'dry snow' or 'soft snow', etc. Just because we didn't use different terms to describe them doesn't mean we can't distinguish between the different variations of snow.

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Well, one of the fascinating aspects of the story I linked is the fact they have found many ancient languages did not have a word for blue, like Hebrew. The only ancient people that had a colour for blue were the Egyptians, something that is explained by the fact they made blue dyes, and therefore had a name for it.

We in fact have many, many names for blue, azure, cerulean, cyan, navy, indigo, ultramarine, we shade blue, light, medium, dark, we describe blue, midnight, electric, true, powder, baby, blue-green and on and on and on.

And pink is not light red. It's a mix of the opposite ends of the rainbow, red and purple.

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Nah. They went out of their way to paint their statuary bright colors.

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I saw that news story when it came out. I have two comments. First, I take the colours they show with a grain of salt. I remember when colorized black-and-white movies first came out. Hollywood delved into it's vast storage caverns and pulled out dresses from movies that were colorized, say, blue, that were actually pink. It's just very interesting speculation, maybe even speculation with some accuracy, but I'm not sure how many historical descriptions we have, if any, of the colours statues were painted. Secondly, if statues were painted with shades of blue, why wasn't there a word for the colour?

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I guess maybe I'm not understanding what FB means by black and white world then. Obviously there was color and they noticed it. But if a culture doesn't bother to distinguish blue from green, or just uses dark/light to describe colors then I would think it's not important to them. If a culture goes to the trouble of re-creating colors to use prominently in their art, then wouldn't it be important enough to name? Maybe it was only important in certain circles (artists/priests?) and was a specialized trade language that spread?

I can't find it now, but I just read an article that talks about colors and the names for them. One language (maybe Russian?) has separate names for blue and light blue, and it points out that we do the same for red (red/pink).

eta: Oh hey - found it. It was youtube clip not an article and he's talking about exactly what the article talks about. He even mentions the Greeks and how they use light/dark as the main qualifier.

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If you read the article I linked, it does say we are pretty sure that people in ancient Greece had the same biology we do, and therefore should have seen the same colours we see. It also points out that when one studies ancient Chinese stories, or Hindu Vedic hymns, or Icelandic sagas, or the Koran, there are no references to the colour blue.

I've been to Greece, I've seen the colour of the sea and the colour of the sky, and the ancient Greeks did not have a name for it. Not one single name for blue. It's fascinating, and unbelievable.

In looking for some other details, I found this from a Scientific American article:

On a more fundamental level, however, Krulwich is right. Pink is not out there, because no color is really “out there.” The world is full of electromagnetic radiation, and the only intrinsic properties that this radiation possesses are physical ones such as wavelength and intensity. Color, on the other hand, is all in your head. “Color is not actually a property of light or of objects that reflect light,” wrote the biologist Timothy H. Goldsmith in his 2006 Scientific American article What Birds See. “It is a sensation that arises within the brain.” My colleagues at Scientific American Mind have for years been elucidating the ways in which the optic system converts electromagnetic radiation into color, a mysterious and fascinating process (and one that can go wrong in interesting ways). Recent research even indicates that people can be made to see “forbidden colors“—greens that are tinted red, or blues that appear yellow.[/quote

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/03/05/stop-this-absurd-war-on-the-color-pink/

Maybe we've changed the way we process colour in our minds?

[Fragile Bird]

Geez, the quote function acts weirdly sometimes. I can't break up those quotes, so I inserted some lines to separate the quote and my responses. Sorry.

[PyroclasticFlow]

Interesting post, mayhaps something to do with the dress thingy floating around the internets?

In New York metro area, there has been a radio commercial/promotion for buying lottery tickets.

In it a woman poses the question why oranges are called oranges, while bananas aren't called yellows, and maybe the fought with lemons over it

She then muses over maybe the color came first

Isn't the English language great???? :bang:

[sj4iy]

Geez, the quote function acts weirdly sometimes. I can't break up those quotes, so I inserted some lines to separate the quote and my responses. Sorry.

I don't think we've changed the way we process color.

I think language has evolved and expanded.

[Fez]

I remember reading/hearing once, no idea where anymore, that cultures don't start developing words for colors until its that they start using. The ancient greek example was specifically mentioned; there were blue things all around the ancient Greeks but it wasn't a color they used. They didn't eat blue foods, they didn't have blue usable resources (woods, minerals, etc.) they didn't have a blue dye for clothing, they didn't have much (if any) blue paint. So even though blue was all around (the sea, the sky, etc.), they didn't have a word for it because it wasn't something relevant to them.

This source also mentioned that apparently blue is one of the last colors that most cultures develop a word for, because there are few blue foods or gatherable things in nature and blue dye is complicated to make.

[Summah]

Both lapis lazuli and indigo were present in Ancient Greece.

Also about the reference to ancient Hebrew above, blue is used in the Torah, for example blue dye for tzitzit is mentioned, so obviously there were words.

This whole idea about people being unable to perceive or think things they do not have words for is silly, because new words and new meanings of existing words come into that language for that purpose and not always from other languages, so obviously the thought came before the word in those cases.

[Ser Lepus]

A (maybe) relevant point: When yellow darkens, we no longer consider it yellow, it becomes a greenish shadow of brown or just brown.

Dark green is still green, dark blue is still blue, dark red is still red, but we just can't perceive yellow as a dark colour, it doesn't compute (for cultural reasons, probably).

Also, it has been said that most of the wine the ancient greeks consumed came from green or white grapes, and that it was different from our wine, way denser, full of impurities (they had to mix it with water in order to drink it) and the fermentation was imperfect so it's possible that it was greenish rather than yellow or greenish yellow like modern white wine.

It's possible that what Homer meant was that the sea was of a dark, intense shade of green. The sea often looks green, and many ancient cultures used the same word for green and blue anyways.