Green and blue in different languages
A difference between the names of the colors green and blue in different languages is sometimes not or only partially reflected.
Proof of language proficiency for green to blue
Most Indo-European languages make a clear distinction between green and blue . Other languages, on the other hand, often only know one word for both colors. Some languages lead the terms back to the basic experience of the usual brightness, so light green and light blue are often combined as color terms in a simplified manner. Borrowings from nature, such as the color of water, which in spring ponds is often dark to black, in rivers it is more transparent, i.e. H. is bright and blue, as well as quickly turning green in stagnant waters due to the formation of algae, or the use of vegetable colors to derive green was used. Numerous peoples in tropical regions such as southern Africa or Papua New Guinea use a single word for the colors green and blue.
“The color band of the solar spectrum is not broken down in the same way in the languages. The number and validity of the color words available are different (even if a large balance may have occurred in the European languages) "
Greek
For example, early ancient Greek texts did not linguistically differentiate between the color of honey and grass. Both were χλωρός chloros . In the rather dry and hot Mediterranean climate of Greece, the grass was probably not green long enough, but mostly yellow, like honey. The green color of fresh grass, however, led to the use of the term as a color designation for green things, such as still today on the leaf green, scientifically chlorophyll , but also the yellow-green chlorine gas . There is no independent term for green in this language area in antiquity. There is no special treatment of blue or the blue-green relationship. Only later texts use the word κυανός kyanos for blue, synonymous with cornflower (hence the botanical epithet Centaurea cyanus ). This term can be found in cyan blue . The modern Greek name for Green πράσινος Prasinos comes to the color of leeks πράσον prason (neugrch. Πράσο) whose Greek name, the second word half of Artepithetons the botanical name Allium Ampelo prasum forms. Without reference to green, the modern Greek color names for blue are μπλε ble and γαλανός galanos (sea blue, sky blue).
Chinese
In Chinese, especially in Old Chinese, Chinese 青 , pinyin qīng, is a generic term for green, blue, (dark) purple and also black. According to the local opinion of the Chinese at the time, the color of the water was rather dark , but not a light blue or green. More recently, 藍 / 蓝 , lán for ( indigo -) blue and 綠 / 绿 , lǜ for green have been used in particular . The latter is used for green tea - 綠茶 / 绿茶 , lǜ chá .
Both ancient Chinese and (largely in its footsteps) the newer language levels, however, know dozens of refining levels (for plant, earth, crystal, gemstone, feather, textile colors) in addition to these few, most commonly used terms. The lake after which the chines. Qinghai Province is named, the Qīnghǎihú - 青海 湖 - "literally the green (blue) sea-lake" where 青 , qīng stands for the rather dark color (see also fig.). Countless compound names are also in use, such as the word 玄青 , xuánqīng with the meaning “deep black”, where 玄 , xuán means “black”.
Korean
The situation is different in Korean with the color designation. Over the centuries, due to Korea's close contact with China, a number of characters ( hanja ) were introduced, which just refer to green and blue. There is the Korean Hanja 緑 Hangul 록 rog or 青 - 청 cheong , to name just a fraction (see the Chinese characters in green and blue in Japanese ).
While the term 緑 rog denotes dark green and is used in Korean today as 緑色 - 녹색 noksaek (literally: dark green color) and appears, for example, in the word for green tea, 青 cheong means light green or blue. This sign originally referred to sky blue or azure. This can be seen, for example, in the formulation 푸른 하늘 pureun haneul . It actually means “blue sky”, but it usually means “clear, beautiful sky”. Older generations use 푸른 색 pureunsaek for “light green or blue” , but younger Koreans use 파란색 paransaek more often with the same meaning.
In the course of the influence of Western languages, especially of English and American, used the young generation itself 파랑 색 paransaek almost exclusively for blue, to avoid misunderstandings, and 草緑色 - 초록색 choroksaek ( Sino-Korean vocabulary for "intense grass green") for normal green and 녹색 again for forest green or dark green.
A special feature of Korean is that one can reproduce numerous shades through a grid of changes to the original color words. Almost every Korean knows 14 names and more for yellow or red. It is even more astonishing that Koreans can distinguish these colors from one another and can imagine them, although the color perception is relatively subjective and cannot be precisely determined.
Japanese
The terms midori - Japanese 緑 , "green" and aoi - 青 い , "azure blue" are mainly used in modern Japanese . The word midori came into use during the Heian period but was long considered a shade of aoi . There are also a number of other words in the green-blue spectrum; these include aiiro - 藍色 , "indigo" (s. Chin.), kon - 紺 , "navy blue" and kusairo - 草 色 , "grass-colored", as well as the English loan words gurīn - グ リ ー ン from green and burū - ブ ル ー from blue .
The use of aoi - 青 い is confusing for Europeans . The central meaning is azure or "sky blue", as in the expression aozora - 青 空 , "blue sky". Aoi , however, has a whole range of transferred uses, once the entire color range from green to blue, but also pale in the use of “you look pale today”. Among other things, it is also used for the “green traffic light signal ” - 青 信号 aoshingō , although blue-green light is actually used in Japan. This is also being done in many other countries in order to make it easier for people with red-green blindness or poor eyesight to drive . A “green” apple (e.g. Granny Smith ), damp grass or trees after the rain can also be described as aoi . Aoi is more likely to be used for a temporary condition, while midori is used for permanent coloring. Grass or trees are usually described as midori and only when they become particularly intense green when moistened by rain, as aoi .
Vietnamese
Vietnamese has words for brown, pink, purple, and gray, but not blue. In Vietnamese, xanh is the word for the color of the (blue) sky and the green leaves of a tree. In order to be able to name the colors precisely, extended forms are often used: xanh lá cây for green, where cây means plant and can therefore be translated as plant color , and xanh da trời where trời means sky.
Guaraní
Guaraní , the language spoken by many inhabitants in Paraguay , uses the word hovy for blue and green , but differentiates between light and dark colors. Which color is meant must be deduced from the context. In practice, however, the Spanish word is mostly used to avoid confusion.
Welsh and Gaelic
From Welsh the word glas is usually translated as blue . But it can be the color of the sea, the grass or a silver tone. The standard translation for green is gwyrdd .
In Gaelic , glass also stands for green as well as blue to gray, but at the same time also for water (similar to Welsh), which could explain the color assignments. Furthermore, gorm can stand for blue and gray in Irish, but not for green. Finally, there is also the unambiguous uaine for green . In the Scottish Gaelic language, which is very closely related to Irish (Gaelic) , gorm is also used for shades of green. So the word fields are very mixed up.
Light blue and dark blue
In Polish and in the East Slavic languages (Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian) there is a completely different peculiarity. In addition to the common distinction between “green” (pl. Zielony , ru. Зелёный) and “blue” (pl. Niebieski ), there is also an exact distinction between (light -) “blue” (pl. Niebieski , ru. голубой ) and "dark blue" (pl. granatowy , ru. синий ). There is a very similar phenomenon in Italian, for which a medium sky blue ( azzurro ) is a completely different basic color than a deep dark blue ( blu ), while a light sky blue is referred to as blu celeste. Likewise, many Spanish speakers (especially in Latin American varieties of Spanish ) strictly distinguish sky blue ( celeste , literally " sky- colored" or "sky-colored") from other blue impressions ( azul ). Also in Thai (light blue are สี ฟ้า si fa ; literally "color of the sky") and dark blue ( สีน้ำเงิน si nam ngoen ; literally "color of tarnished silver") are regarded as different colors. For the middle blue, which German and English speakers perceive as the basic color, there is no really suitable name.
Explanatory approaches
Some researchers assume that these speakers could not distinguish the colors blue and green optically either. This is extremely questionable, however, as Koreans or Vietnamese can easily learn new words for “green” or “blue” in English or another language, which - if the theory were correct - they would otherwise not be able to distinguish without being surprised. As already clarified, several such languages also have differentiated terms with which they can define the color more precisely.
Two theories that are not yet certain are presented below.
- On the one hand, there is the assumption that there is no linguistic distinction between the two colors because there is no distinction between them in the respective language for cultural reasons. The linguistic relativity , according to people can only see what they can express in their language. However, this does not explain why there is no term for a specific color in these languages. For this thesis, it was found that Russian speakers, who have different words for light and dark blue, can distinguish different shades of blue more quickly than, for example, native English speakers. The reason remains unclear: Does the distinction work better because different terms exist, or do different terms exist because the color tones are perceived differently for cultural reasons?
- On the other hand, it is argued that UV radiation from the tropical sun damages the organ of vision so that blue can no longer be clearly recognized. This process, which also takes place in non-tropical countries, runs faster under the tropical sun. So the blue vision is reduced relatively early. In some languages the word “dark” is therefore used for the color “blue”. Delwin Lindsey and Angela Brown of Ohio State University propose this theory, but assume that not all users of a language with a "blue" vocabulary have cloudy lenses. As soon as only part of the population is affected, it no longer makes sense for the others to use a distinguishing word such as “blue” in order to be understood. If only every fourth person cannot perceive blue, at least one person does not know what is meant in almost every second conversation.
Color divisions
The continuous light spectrum is not the basis of color perception. The field of perceived colors cannot necessarily be captured in a color wheel. At least the large number of lightened and darkened chromatic variants are not covered by the spectral colors. The “blue sky”, for example, can appear from light (= white) to thunderstorm gray to bright blue and evening red in shades of orange and purple, depending on the time of year and time of day. Thus, the color designation in each language is originally divided into a finite number of colors with meanings typical of the language. The “combination” of the “spectrally neighboring colors” blue and green thus only appears unusual to those who know this color wheel division from their culture. However, this cannot be explained by pathological properties.
See also
literature
- Brent Berlin, Paul Kay: Basic color terms: their universality and evolution. New edition. CLSI Publ., Stanford (Calif.) 1999, ISBN 1-57586-162-3 .
- Paul Kay: Methodological issues in cross-language color naming. In: Language, culture, and society .: key topics in linguistic anthropology . Univ. Press, Cambridge 2006, pp. 115-134, ISBN 0-521-84941-1 .
- Paul Kay: Color Naming in Human Languages. Univ. of Chicago Press, July 2007, ISBN 1-57586-325-1 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Colors in web design
- ^ Anna Wierzbicka: Semantic Primitives and Semantic Fields. In: Frames, Fields, and Contrasts. Erlbaum, Hillsdale NJ 1992, p. 221; Wierzbicka: Semantics. Primes and Universals. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1996, p. 312.
- ↑ Wiktionary: "gorm" (#Irish): Entry on the meaning and etymology of the word 'gorm' in the Irish language (Gaeilge) (English, accessed on February 14, 2018)
- ↑ Wiktionary: "gorm" (#Scottish Gaelic): Entry on the meaning and etymology of the word 'gorm' in the Scottish Gaelic language (Gàidhlig) (English, accessed on February 14, 2018)
- ↑ a b news @ nature: Seeing the blues - Having different words for light and dark blue may change how you see them .
- ^ Anna Wierzbicka: Semantic Primitives and Semantic Fields. In: Frames, Fields, and Contrasts. Erlbaum, Hillsdale NJ 1992, p. 221; Wierzbicka: Semantics. Primes and Universals. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1996, p. 313.
- ↑ Jochen Paulus: The blue ocean: Many peoples in the tropics have only one word for “blue” and “green”. In: Die Zeit , February 27, 2003.