DOES LANGUAGE SHAPE HOW WE SEE COLOR?
DOES LANGUAGE SHAPE HOW WE SEE COLOR? It turns out that when I posted here on “grue” languages, I was also stepping into the “fierce debate …in linguistics.” A “grue” language does not distinguish between green and blue. This wikipedia article on distinguishing blue from green in languages points out that there are also languages which do not separate blue from black. For example, “[i]n traditional Welsh (and related Celtic languages), glas could refer to blue but also to certain shades of green and grey….” and “[i]n Old Norse the word blå was also used to describe black (and the common word for people of African descent was thus blåmenn ‘blue/black men’).” When I posted on grue languages, I thought that a language that permitted (or required) its speakers to distinguish between green and blue would make them more sensitive to and more accurate in discriminating those shades—and that, in contrast, grue languages might promote a kind of color blindness in those shades (and therefore language would be shaping perception and thought.)