It's also weird how many colors are named after foods

#word #etymology #orange #linguistics #english #language #color #funfact #trivia #harvard #words #funfacts #colours

[NoraCannaday]

So if you want a rabbit hole you can start looking in to dichromacy, trichromacy and tetrachromacy.

I wish I had the bandwidth to track the new color words that are going to crop up now that we're in a position to actually watch ourselves evolve.

Several studies, including one from 2006 by Jules Davidoff have proven that the way people talk about color relates directly to how they perceive, compare and accurately distinguish colors from one another. (Have fun with that chicken v. the egg dilemma).

Your fun fact of the day: the country Brazil was named after the pigment Brazilwood. Used in Europe as early as the 12th c., with its name first appearing among surviving written sources in 1321. Brazilwood the color was being made from sappanwood which was coming over from Southeast Asia. When the Portuguese started to invade/colonize what is now South America, they found a healthy source for the very valuable pigment so they named the country after it.

[FarfettilLejl]

As a native speaker of Polish, I remember it was surprising to me that English didn't have different words for niebieski and błękitny

[turtlellama]

Japanese technically has a word for green. 2, actually. But most people will still call green things blue because the concept of green and blue being different is still so new.

[rippujin]

Just like how they call green lights in Japan “blue”

[ProjectThunderclaw]

I've seen the claim, specifically on Wikipedia, that the Old English word for orange was "geoluread", lit. "yellow-red", but the source appears to be random book on a different subject (Symbols and Their Hidden Meaning by T.A. Kenner) so I'm a little suspicious of it.

There's also the word "brandgul", "fire-yellow", attested in the Scandinavian languages from at least as far back as "orange" as a color word is in English. I think I've seen (claimed) attestation in English, but I can't find any references atm.

But in either case these words point towards something similar to the light blue/dark blue situation, where it wasn't necessarily considered a seaprate color, but rather something between red and yellow, in the way we still call certain teal-ish colors "blue-green".

[emmadobbins]

I have a feeling Europeans didn't see many fruit varieties until real sailing trade started-- do we maybe think that our eyes were less sensitive to color as well, etymology aside?

[elcanaldelucas]

I think the light and dark blue distinction is quite common in european languages, i know that spanish has "azul and celeste" and italian has "blu and azzuro", and considering that minecraft has both colors for wool im confident that swedish does as well

[brromo]

That "rule" can be helpful, but it has about a billion asterisks

[pinkpegacorn]

my artist ass differentiating between blue and light blue by using the word cyan:

[rudrasingh]

The color is named after the fruit but it was named after the tree (Narangi in Sanskrit/Hindi became Orange)

[LawfulDmcBoo]

The original name for the color "Orange", was "Geoluread" (Pronounced "Yellow-Red"), which then evolved into the new English word for the fruit "Orange", which was taken from French's word for the fruit, "Pomme d'orange".

[eliaswasneverhere]

I be sitting here and next thing I know is tangerine being named after my home city 😭😭

[xyz]

all warm colors uses to be called "red" which is why when you see someone with orange hair they are instead called a "redhead"

[syrmasu]

It's weird. Because my native language differentiates blue and light blue (Hebrew) but I don't think about them as separate colours to quite the same extent as pink and red. But I don't think it practically shows anywhere as if someone called something blue a light blue that would be incorrect and vice versa. Might just be English influence

[pvp]

I knew about the orange thing, but I'm glad I stayed for some of the other tidbits. Also Greek and a bunch of languages differentiate between blue and azure 👍🏾

[Elote_on_pudding]

No one:
Geolic languages having five freaking thousand colors.

Also I LOVE your videos! I’m gonna be a linguist when I grow up and your literally such an inspiration

[prashidash]

i personally distinguish between blue, cyan, and aqua

[irespondtotheads]

Orange is named after the tree that bears the fruit, which then became known as oranges themselves. Idk what they were called before that.

[evenaxin]

Why did screens get colors in the same order?

[HutchMuch]

we really should differentiate between dark and light blue more. like, my dudes, those are two different fucking colors