Quoted from the book The Art of Looking Sideways, but I remember this stuff from...somewhere else. A neuroscience class, maybe. Or a free lecture. Or perhaps anthropology. Who knows.
All languages have black and white.
If there are three words, the third is red.
If there are four, then it is green or yellow.
If five then whichever didn't make four, yellow or green.
If six, it is blue.
If seven, it is brown.
If eight or more, then purple, pink, orange, and grey are added in any order.
I was rather surprised about blue. And, as you are probably thinking, it isn't precisely this simple...but essentially this is the rule.
Also, apparently English has only thirty color words.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
I contend that English has more than thirty words to refer to colors. I offer the following as evidence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors
yeah, that baffled me as well (and i think i may have even linked to that wikipedia page previously?)...
perhaps by that they meant exclusively english (not borrowed from other languages) and exclusively referring to a color (almond doesn't count, for instance). but the number thirty still seems suspiciously low.
Post a Comment