The more important question to ask about languages and color words is whether the culture thinks the differentiation is necessary between two colors.

That differentiation can be on a personal perceptual level. There are lots of purple/pink, purple/blue, yellow/green hues that I have had arguments with others about. Especially about the colour of tennis balls. I say they are green, everyone else seems to think they are yellow.

The Florida Marlins wore teal.

They won 2 World Series Championships faster than any other franchise.

Conclusion: Evil wins.

Then, when you stop spending a brazilian dollars on players, evil loses.

Somehow this seems like the wrong take-away message.

I like teal. The Marlins, not so much.

Tennis balls are tennis-ball colored. Also, they smell like something a preteen would inhale for the high.

People end up with such crazy wrong ideas about color. Like, most people would be aghast at the idea of the classical Greek statues being painted bright colors. That dignified, gently faded rustic antique from New Mexico? Used to be neon-colored! People did it that way on purpose!

The colour thing is a nuisance in learning Mandarin. They do have separate words for blue and green, but then they have this whole other word that means blue and green. Or possibly black. So far I have not discerned any guiding principles for their use.

I haven't studied any languages where the word for "blue" and "green" are the same. Oh, and blue + green can also = turquoise.

English seems to have a bi-level treatment of color -- a generic word broken down into specifics. Example -- scarlet, crimson, and wine are all subsets of red.

The language as perception thing makes sense, I guess. It's like being able to differentiate between types of lava. In English, you get lava. But in Hawaiian you have two different words because you know there are two types of lava. In English you'd need an extra modifier for when you noticed the difference.

Oh MAN, my stomach hurts. Enough that I've been up since 2 AM. It's like a giant ragey fist squeezing my innards. I do not like it, Sam I Am.

Greek - ancient and modern - has very different color words than English. Lots of nuance in the yellow-green-brown spectrum, little blue and red. (No, I can't give you any freaking examples, I am pulling this out of deep memory=my ass.)

Like, most people would be aghast at the idea of the classical Greek statues being painted bright colors.

Yeah, the bright red lips on the Athena in Nashville's Parthenon were kind of a shock. Apparently Athena needed a colorist.

OK, I have much hatred in my heart regarding the Open Source Boobie Project. SO MUCH.

GAH!!!!

Hey, is anybody else's gmail in a death spiral? Mine seems to be attempting to reload itself unto eternity, and will not cough up my mail.

Very irritating.