1answer.
Ask question
Login Signup
Ask question
All categories
  • English
  • Mathematics
  • Social Studies
  • Business
  • History
  • Health
  • Geography
  • Biology
  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Computers and Technology
  • Arts
  • World Languages
  • Spanish
  • French
  • German
  • Advanced Placement (AP)
  • SAT
  • Medicine
  • Law
  • Engineering
Brrunno [24]
3 years ago
7

What is an example of how languages differ in distinguishing colors? *

English
1 answer:
Blizzard [7]3 years ago
6 0

Answer:

Explanation:

The human eye can physically perceive millions of colour. Some people can’t see differences in colours – so called colour blindness – due to a defect or absence of the cells in the retina that are sensitive to high levels of light: the cones. But the distribution and density of these cells also varies across people with “normal vision” causing us all to experience the same colour in slightly different ways.

Besides our individual biological make up, colour perception is less about seeing what is actually out there and more about how our brain interprets colours to create something meaningful. The perception of colour mainly occurs inside our heads and so is subjective – and prone to personal experience.

Take for instance people with synaesthesia, who are able to experience the perception of colour with letters and numbers. Synaesthesia is often described as a joining of the senses – where a person can see sounds or hear colours. But the colours they hear also differ from case to case.

Another example is the classic Alderson’s checker-shadow illusion. Here, although two marked squares are exactly the same colour, our brains don’t perceive them this way.

Since the day we were born we have learnt to categorise objects, colours, emotions, and pretty much everything meaningful using language. And although our eyes can perceive thousands of colours, the way we communicate about colour – and the way we use colour in our everyday lives – means we have to carve this huge variety up into identifiable, meaningful categories.

Painters and fashion experts, for example, use colour terminology to refer to and discriminate hues and shades that to all intents and purposes may all be described with one term by a non expert.

Different languages and cultural groups also carve up the colour spectrum differently. Some languages like Dani, spoken in Papua New Guinea, and Bassa, spoken in Liberia and Sierra Leone, only have two terms, dark and light. Dark roughly translates as cool in those languages, and light as warm. So colours like black, blue, and green are glossed as cool colours, while lighter colours like white, red, orange and yellow are glossed as warm colours.

The Warlpiri people living in Australia’s Northern Territory don’t even have a term for the word “colour”. For these and other such cultural groups, what we would call “colour” is described by a rich vocabulary referring to texture, physical sensation and functional purpose.

Remarkably, most of the world’s languages have five basic colour terms. Cultures as diverse as the Himba in the Namibian plains and the Berinmo in the lush rainforests of Papua New Guinea employ such five term systems. As well as dark, light, and red, these languages typically have a term for yellow, and a term that denotes both blue and green. That is, these languages do not have separate terms for “green” and “blue” but use one term to describe both colours, a sort of “grue”.

People see colours differently according to the way their language categorises them.

Historically, Welsh had a “grue” term, namely glas, as did Japanese and Chinese. Nowadays, in all these languages, the original grue term has been restricted to blue, and a separate green term is used. This is either developed from within the language – as is the case for Japanese – or through lexical borrowing, as is the case for Welsh.

Russian, Greek, Turkish and many other languages also have two separate terms for blue – one referring exclusively to darker shades, and one referring to lighter shades.

The way we perceive colours can also change during our lifetime. Greek speakers who have two fundamental colour terms to describe light and dark blue – “ghalazio” and “ble” – are more prone to see these two colours as more similar after living for long periods of time in the UK – where these two colours are described in English by the same fundamental colour term: blue.

This is because after long term everyday exposure to an English speaking environment, the brain of native Greek speakers starts interpreting the colours “ghalazio” and “ble” as part of the same colour category.

But this isn’t just something that happens with colour, in fact different languages can influence our perceptions in all areas of life. And in our lab at Lancaster University we are investigating how the use of and exposure to different languages changes the way we perceive everyday objects. Ultimately, this happens because learning a new language is like giving our brain the ability to interpret the world differently – including the way we see and process colours.

You might be interested in
Hamlet's obsession with death and decay in act 5 is symbolized by
muminat

The correct answer is:

The skull of Yorik simbolizes Hamlet's obsession with death and decay in act 5.

In the Act 5 Hamlet visits the grave yard and foinds the skull of a man who worked for his father and who he knew as a child, it brings good memories of Hamlet`s childhood when all was well.

Hamlet remembers the dead in the graveyard. "Alas, poor Yorick," exclaimsHamlet, as he recalls that Yorick was "a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy," one who "hath borne [Hamlet] on his back a thousand times" (5.1.190-191; 191-192; 192-193).

7 0
3 years ago
Read 2 more answers
What is the main idea of this passage? Eating healthy requires maintaining a balanced diet. Although “fad diets” are constantly
mote1985 [20]
C. It is healthier to eat a balanced diet that to try "fad diets"

6 0
3 years ago
Why can't we force our emotions when we are truly happy?
WITCHER [35]

Answer:

Emotions come from within and how we feel, also how we interact with those around us.

Example:

If you are alone in a dark room you will most likely be scared, or if you are in a bright colored room with people you like you will most likely be happy or neutral.

5 0
3 years ago
Read the excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech.
kakasveta [241]

Answer:

let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

4 0
3 years ago
Read 2 more answers
PART A: Which statement best describes the theme of this poem?
klasskru [66]

Answer:

Part A: The statement which best describes the theme of the poem is:

C. Tragedy occurs both on the grand, collective scale and on the smaller, individual scale.

Part B: The quote which best supports the answer to Part A is:

B. "It solved by itself a math problem / that multiplied the one death by millions / to equal homeland." (Lines 37 - 39)

Explanation:

I found this question online; it refers to the poem "Bag of Bones" by Dunya Mikhail.

<u>The poem's theme concerns the death of many as well as the death of one. </u>One death will bring an impact with it - in the poem, it is the mother who lost her son. When a mass grave was dug up, she was able to find his remains, which brought back the memories of when he was alive as well as the feeling of loss and injustice - his death was the result of a dictatorship.

However, many more mothers are still there, at the grave, looking for their children. That one mother's tragedy is the same tragedy of many others. <u>What the dictator has done is ruin several individual lives which, when put together, results in a collective tragedy for millions.</u>

6 0
3 years ago
Other questions:
  • "Don't be a Scrooge!" Jack said. "We will be doing this alien a favor! What figurative term is being used in this sentence?​
    6·1 answer
  • What is the meaning of a “closed shop”? A “closed shop” is a factory where all of the workers are union members. A “closed shop”
    12·2 answers
  • Is are a helping verb? please, I must know.
    13·1 answer
  • What African American hero made Florida a safe place to live, work, and raise a family?
    15·1 answer
  • When did Italian city-states trading with the east
    5·1 answer
  • What does the engine driver's use of the phrase "It ain't so bad as all that 'ere" reveal about his use of language? A.  He uses
    9·1 answer
  • 4. Pg. 263 Analyze Character and Theme: How do the three apparitions that present themselves to
    11·1 answer
  • It has been said that Shakespeare wrote at least thirty-seven plays, but:
    9·1 answer
  • According to the lesson, what part of speech is often stressed in iambic pentameter?
    11·1 answer
  • Read the following text and answer the question that follows.
    9·1 answer
Add answer
Login
Not registered? Fast signup
Signup
Login Signup
Ask question!