In English , we might call the color above “ sky blue , ” or perhaps just “ faint blue . ” But in Japanese , it ’s not blue at all . It ’s its own color : mizu . It ’s perceive as a unique chromaticity , asGOODreports , much like we think of red and purple being alone .
Nipponese researchers in Tokyo and Kyoto , and Ohio State University researchers in Columbus asked 57 aboriginal Japanese speakers to look at color scorecard and name the colors they saw for get a better idea of how many discrete , foundation coloring the Nipponese language recognizes . As they compose in theJournal of Vision , they found 16 distinct color categories .
The 11 main , base colors named by most participants were tantamount to color found in the English language : black , white , gray , red , white-livered , green , blueish , pinkish , orangish , brown , and purpleness . Others were unique to Japanese , visit as distinct color in their own right : mizu(meaning “ water , ” a easy blue),hada(meaning “ skin spirit , ” a peach),kon(meaning “ indigo , ” a dark blue),matcha(a yellow - green refer for green tea),enji(maroon),oudo(meaning “ sand or mud , ” a color we ’d call mustard),yamabuki(gold , named after a efflorescence ) , and cream .
The colour terms gathered through the written report . The tall the column , the more content described the vividness using that intelligence . ( All the colors were distinguish by at least four participants . ) Image Credit : Kuriki et . al , Journal of Vision(2017 )
Mizu , in peculiar , stood out as a distinguishable vividness . While not everyone in the field identify dark blue askon , mizuwas almost universally acknowledge by the consultation subjects . Because of this , the investigator suggest that it be recognized as its own twelfth color family in the Japanese vocabulary , added to the nomenclature ’s standard color categories of cherry , blue , green , etc . ( the ones that English loudspeaker system would find intimate ) .
The universe of these colour does n’t necessarily mean Japanese is more sensible to coloration differences overall compared to other languages — it does n’t have names for some coloring material we can key in English , such as magenta or lime .
“ The report of color naming is fundamentally the study of how words come to be associated with things — all affair that be , from teacups to love , ” Ohio State optometrist Angela Brown explain in apress release . “ The visual system can recognise one thousand thousand of colors , ” she says , “ but masses only draw a limited numeral of them , and that varies depending on their community and the smorgasbord of colors that enter into their day-to-day lifespan . ”
[ h / tGOOD ]
