Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Language Can Affect Our Perception of Color



After learning about our perception of color in class, I came across an article that discusses how different languages can affect the way one perceives color. Most of the world's languages have words for five basic colors, but some languages have multiple words for multiple colors. For instance, the Greek language has two words for the color blue depending on its shade, "ghalazio" for dark blue and "ble" for light blue. If someone who's native language was Greek was to spend a few years in the UK, they'd start to see these two shades of blue as more similar since the English language only has one word for the two colors--"blue." We are able perceive millions of colors, but are limited by our language that forces us to categorize these colors into a few groups by a few names, changing the way we actually perceive each of these colors. As a result, in a way, the way we perceive almost all areas of daily life is owed to our languages and cultures.

Here is a link to the article: https://qz.com/1254316/why-do-humans-see-different-colors-it-depends-what-language-you-speak/


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