News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Why Japan Has Blue Traffic Lights Instead of Green. Parent comment

Re:Why Japan Has Blue Traffic Lights Instead of Green by kipchak on Monday October 23, 2023 @12:39PM (#37988109)
I wonder if there might be a language aspect to this, with males in the US generally having less familiarity with words for the in between colors leading to more difficulty distinguishing between them, with people with more words for greenish shades for example having an easier time seeing different shades of green.

https://boingboing.net/2011/08/12/how-language-affects-color...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Japan Has Blue Traffic Lights Instead of Green by Arelius on Monday October 23, 2023 @12:59PM (#37988395)
I'd have to dig up references, but I understand it's a pretty well documented effect that having words for colors is directly related to a population seeing more distinction for those colors.

If I recall, some early societies didn't have a distinction between green and blue. Given that blue often doesnt show up naturally outside of the sky and it's reflections. And in those populations they would be much less sensitive to distinctions in blue-green.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Japan Has Blue Traffic Lights Instead of Green by kalensh on Monday October 23, 2023 @01:18PM (#37988692)
Which is exactly what the article is about ;) (Well, one example of an early society that didn't distinguish between green a blue.)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Japan Has Blue Traffic Lights Instead of Green by kipchak on Monday October 23, 2023 @05:01PM (#37991532)
For early societies, you might be thinking of the Greeks, though apparently it's somewhat common between languages?[1] For Greek the idea to originate from Homer's writings, with colors being more described in terms of how light or dark they are versus specific hues.[2]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer)

[ Parent | on HN ]