
Why Red Means Red in Almost Every Language (2015) - amaccuish
http://nautil.us/issue/76/language/why-red-means-red-in-almost-every-language-rp
======
escape_goat
I know that authors do not choose the titles of their articles, but it was
somewhat vexing that the question of "why 'red' means 'red' in almost every
language" went entirely unaddressed.

~~~
derefr
Ah, but that _wasn 't_ the title, precisely. They weren't talking about 'red'
(the word) at all, but rather _red_ —the semantic concept that the English
word 'red' points to. The mysterious assertion being followed up on is, in
other words, not:

    
    
        en["red"] ≡ en["red"].translate(other_lang)
    

(i.e. "other languages also have a word 'red', that is the translation for the
English word 'red'"), but rather:

    
    
        en["red"].referent ≡ en["red"].translate(other_lang).referent
    

(i.e. other languages have a word _eqivalent in referent_ to the English word
'red'), or even:

    
    
        ∃other_lang, ∀color_word: en[colorWord].referent ≡ en[colorWord].translate(other_lang).referent
    

(i.e. there are other languages that share a complete set of color-words
_referents_ with English, such that you can bijectively map each English
color-word to an equivalent color-word in that other language.)

...which _is_ the topic of the body of the article.

~~~
escape_goat
That seems a bit hand-wavy to me. Firstly, that _was_ precisely the title. You
are talking about the _meaning_ of the title. Secondly, I did understand the
title, and I am not speaking of the word 'red'. I am speaking of the semantic
category referred to by the word 'red' in English. Thirdly, it is clear from
the article that not all semantic color categories match cleanly and
bijectively across languages. Fourthly, the assertion that 'red' _does_ match
bijectively across "almost every language" is not made in the article, and no
explanation of any reason for any such claim is given. Fifthly, there is no
information in the article that affirms the why of _any_ semantic matching (or
mismatching) occurs across languages: a theory of biologically-based
thresholds in retinal perception is mentioned, but as a hypothesis, not as
useful science. The article merely discusses the history of the similarity
(and dissimilarity) observed in a series of studies.

~~~
derefr
My point was that there was a difference between your quotation of the
article's title, and the article's actual title. You put quote-marks around
'red'; the article itself did not. This is a _use-mention distinction_ : when
writers—but journalists especially—talk about (i.e. mention) words, they put
them in quotation marks. When writers _use_ them to refer to their referents,
they don't.

This is important because news articles themselves get translated to other
languages. Consider what the title of the article would be if the article were
translated to another language. If they were attempting to mention the English
word 'red', you'd still see the quoted English word 'red' in the translated
title! Whereas, if they were attempting to refer to the semantic category, the
title would just say, translated the destination language, "why [local red-
equivalent color word] is [local red-equivalent color word] in every
language."

My point was to clarify that you were making a very different argument by
asserting that the article never clarified "why 'red' is 'red'..." than you'd
make by asserting that the article never clarified "why red is red...".

> Fourthly, the assertion that 'red' does match bijectively across "almost
> every language"

Again, be careful: that's not the claim the article is making, but it _is_ the
claim _you_ appear to be making by putting 'red' in quotes like that :) You
have to be explicit when speaking of semiotics!

> Fifthly, there is no information in the article that affirms the why of any
> semantic matching (or mismatching) occurs across languages

Well, that's just moving the goalposts; nobody was claiming that the article
backed up its claims. It's just one of an innumerable number of these science-
journalism blurbs about the weird color-category finding. For another one,
see:
[https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/segments/21121...](https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/segments/211213-sky-
isnt-blue)

~~~
escape_goat
Okay, I had missed that. You're right, I did put quotes around 'red' (like
that) and I can now see why that was a communications failure on my part. In
truth, I had initially echoed the title with the single quotes around the
'red', and then gone back and put the whole phrase in double quotes while
failing to remove the single quotes.

However, the article clarifies neither why "'red' is 'red' in almost every
language," _nor_ "Why Red Means Read in Almost Every Language," as you seem to
agree while mysteriously somehow also disagreeing with me. It is true that the
article does not claim that red (category) matches bijectively across "almost
every language," but that is my _entire point_. It is the _title_ that
introduces the notion that "Red" will somehow feature prominently in the
content of the article, which it _does not_. We could argue about whether or
not bijectivity is implied by the title, but that would be irrelevant.

Regarding whether this is moving the goalposts, I rather disagree. It is the
_title_ that makes the claim that the _why_ of anything at all will be
addressed by the article. If it is moving the goalposts to point out that the
article not only does not establish "Why Red Means Red" also lacks significant
information about the "why" of anything, then it is surely moving the
goalposts in the direction of the kicker.

You wrote to affirm that the true meaning of the article's title referred in a
sufficient way to the actual topic of the article, contra my apparent
complaint. I see that there was a misunderstanding involved, but that aside —
right, the title was not referring to the _word_ 'red' — I disagree and
actually I don't see how you can sustain any such argument.

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sorokod
"His professors and textbooks taught that people could only recognize a color
as categorically distinct from others if they had a word for it"

This is counterintuitive to me should this not be the other way around - that
only categorically distinguishable colours have words describing them?

~~~
ivanhoe
I'd say it should be rephrased as "could only name a color as categorically
distinct from others" to make it more obvious. If you're asked if something is
blue or red, then turquoise would definitely be described as blue, but green
also. It's not that you wouldn't see the difference between sky and grass,
it's just that you'd classify it all as a different shades of the same color,
as it's closer to it than to say red. On the other hand yellow would probably
be a shade of light red in that example. Once you're used to that palette
you'd start simply ignoring the differences in shade for practical usages,
like for instance Cambridge Blue is called blue, while to me it's really
green.

~~~
dTal
Well I mean, obviously you can't "name a color as distinct" if your language
doesn't have a distinct name for it. That doesn't mean it's perceptually
indistinguishable.

I'm not sure why this tautology is regarded as such a big deal.

~~~
empath75
Even if you don’t have a different word for green and blue, one could
certainly express the idea of a blue that is like a leaf rather than the sky.

~~~
ryanmaclean
You’d assume so, but this is in fact false.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_la...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_language)

~~~
jcranmer
That doesn't really support your contention. The color naming debate
underlying the entire discussion is primarily focused on _basic_ color
terminology, for which colors that are merely allusions to a physical object
(e.g., turquoise, gold, lavender) are excluded. But that doesn't tell you what
terminology people will actually reach for in description. Japanese, for
example, uses "ao" to refer to essentially the entire blue/green spectrum, but
"midori" (lit. "leaf") is used to green, increasingly to the exclusion of "ao"
in modern Japanese (side note: this is _literally_ an example, explicitly
mentioned in your reference, of what the GP is suggesting happens).

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riffraff
mandatory mention of hungarian, where "red" does not really exist, and in its
place there are two different words, roughly equivalent to "dark red" (wine or
blood is vörös) and "light red" (fire or apples would be piros).

I am not sure if it's saturation or light or hue difference or whatever, and I
can't really tell the difference, but I would quote the example I received
first: "it's normal for someone to have vörös hair, but someone with piros
hair would likely be a punk".

~~~
floriol
I'm Hungarian and it's hard to describe the difference. Your examples are good
indeed, before wine, blood and red carpet we exclusively use 'vörös', as well
as for red headed people, but I'm not sure it is because a different colour
(bit darker, saturated red. We also (in a slightly literatury way) say
vérvörös, blood-red coloured, I think that's the colour I would associate the
word with) or simply because they are almost fixed prefixes.

We also use 'bordó', to mean an even darker red (though for my not
particularly "trained" eyes they are practically the same as vörös)

------
Iv
I think it is hard to imagine that evolution did not result in some hard-
wiring of our reactions to the sight of blood.

Blood=violence, LOOK OUT!

~~~
yorwba
Except for the half of humanity who bleed regularly without any violence to
look out for.

~~~
Iv
Surprisingly, there indeed seems to be no hard-wired understanding of periods.
Freaking out on your first one is common for unwarned young women. Dealing
with this has been off-loaded to culture.

And the various idiocies in traditional cultures about how to deal with
menstruating women show that freaking out about this has been pretty common
through history.

------
IshKebab
> When shown a wheel of similarly colored squares, people identify the offbeat
> shade more quickly if it comes from a different color category (as shown in
> the wheel on the left) than if it comes from the same category (as shown on
> the right). This effect suggests that the words we use to describe colors
> influences how we perceive them.

Or much more obviously that we name colours based on how we perceive them?

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iamgopal
How do we know we all see same red color ?

~~~
srean
As a kid I used to entertain myself with the thought that we don't, we just
agree on the names. Even in the hypothetical simple case of RGB perceived as
GBR I would still learn to name G as R.

------
sytelus
Long form articles like this ought to contain summery!

 _infants were quicker to recognize a color from a new category if it appeared
in their left visual field, which sends inputs to the right hemisphere of the
brain. Adults, on the other hand, were quicker to recognize a new color
category if it appeared in their right visual field, which corresponds to the
left hemisphere, where the language centers reside._

~~~
ianai
Ok how does that translate to everyone saying red for the color? I’m confused
as to what they’re trying to communicate from the title.

~~~
input_sh
Colours don't translate nicely across languages.

Sometimes, blue and green are different shades of the same colour, sometimes
light blue and dark blue are two different colours, some languages consider
pink to just be lighter red etc.

So, the title claims that the colour red is always red, regardless of the
language.

~~~
tempguy9999
> sometimes light blue and dark blue are two different colours

I believe it's so in russian

> some languages consider pink to just be lighter red

This is interesting. Here in the UK pink is generally described and accepted
as light red, but I've always considered it to be a separate colour, and I met
someone who mentioned he though the same, so it's not just me.

There's light red but to my eyes that is qualitatively different to this
[https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/shock...](https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/shocking-
pink?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiU0O2n96rlAhVISsAKHen8ALMQ9QEwAHoECAUQBA)

Any other views? Perhaps someone with knowledge of chromatics can better
resolve the question.

thanks

~~~
didgeoridoo
You’re articulating the difference between “pink” (a red tint, i.e. red mixed
with white) and “hot pink” or “magenta”, the fully-saturated midpoint between
red and purple.

~~~
tempguy9999
Well that's interesting. I can see that now.

But looking at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_pink](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_pink)
it appears to lump your magenta (red/purple) into the same category as
red/white. So really we've got 2 categories with the same name of 'pink'? 2
different things?

~~~
didgeoridoo
Here’s a more comprehensive, if somewhat convoluted, explanation:
[https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-pink-
an...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-pink-and-magenta)

“Pink and magenta have the same hue. What distinction there is to be found
between magenta and pink lies along other axes than that of hue [i.e.
saturation and value]. All pinks are magenta and all magentas are purple, and
by extension, pink is a purple. However, it does not work the other direction:
it does not mean that all purples are magenta nor that all magentas are pink,
let alone that all purples are pink.”

(Visit the link for a more detailed picture of the differences)

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peterwwillis
> wrangled pre-linguistic babies

I don't know why I love this wording, but I do.

