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comment by keazy3
keazy3  ·  4192 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Riddled with irregularity

What I don't understand about this article (among many other things) is the comparison between our "single" name for blue, the Russians' names blue and light blue, and the natives' single name that encompasses black, yellow, blue, etc.. The naming of different colors that are similar (which we do) may refer to hues, brightness, or shades as mentioned later in the article. However, colors like yellow and blue are not variations of the same color and cannot be related to how we might feel about the natives only having one name for black, yellow, etc... to how the Russians feel about us only having one name for blue (which is not true since we have "light blue" and others).





NotPhil  ·  4192 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    colors like yellow and blue are not variations of the same color

The article was saying that languages start off only distinguishing between light colors and dark colors, then they, apparently, start defining warmer colors (red and yellow) before moving on to cooler colors (green and blue).