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Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

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Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#111

Post by codys »

troad wrote: post #50
yznlp wrote: post #29

Not a linguist. I feel like this is just an issue of imperfect correspondence between the word "blue" in English and "ao" in Japanese. The article explains the historical reason why ao encompasses both blue and green, so I think the concept of semantic field comes into play here. As an analogy, a MacBook is a type of laptop, and laptops, desktops and tablets are all IT devices (for lack of a better word). Apple might…

I trained as a linguist and you hit the nail on the head. Word meanings are fuzzy clouds of references and nuances, and every language has slightly different clouds. There is nothing magical about this, despite the recurrent lizard-brain notion that words or names are somehow mystical and intrinsic, and that these differences must somehow be meaningful. Differences are quite common with colour terms - you don’t need…

On Purple vs Pink: it seems that might explain Lego's official name for pieces one might call "pink" use "purple" (with various modifiers) instead.

https://www.thebrickfan.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/LEGO-...

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#112

Post by joeconway »

As a British person living in the USA I often enjoy that the line between blue and green shades definitely differs between cultures and there are certain shades of teal that US/UK folks will strongly disagree on.

I’ve since noticed that I think this question of where “that is definitely green” ends and “that is obviously blue” begins is different for lots of countries

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#113

Post by skhr0680 »

fenomas wrote: post #58
yznlp wrote: post #29

Not a linguist. I feel like this is just an issue of imperfect correspondence between the word "blue" in English and "ao" in Japanese. The article explains the historical reason why ao encompasses both blue and green, so I think the concept of semantic field comes into play here. As an analogy, a MacBook is a type of laptop, and laptops, desktops and tablets are all IT devices (for lack of a better word). Apple might…

> Now, midori (green) is a type of ao ("grue"), and.. It isn't. TFA is vague on this, but in modern usage "ao" just means blue. There are a bunch of set phrases where it refers to various other cool colors, but to a modern listener "ao" on its own isn't a category including all those colors, it just means blue.

You’re going to have to define modern usage because words where ao=green are still common in every day language, like seishun or aoba

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#114

Post by Izkata »

doubled112 wrote: post #109
vages wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am looking out my hotel room window in Hiroshima in this very instant, and I even got my wife to confirm it: The traffic lights definitely are GREEN.

I'm glad you mentioned that you had your wife confirm, because I'm convinced my wife sees more colours than I do, and I can't be the only one. I've had this exact discussion. What colour is this? Blue. No, can't you see it's green? Maybe it has some green in it Okay, so is it blue or green? Yes! Why did you ask me then?

Maybe not more colors, but more easily distinguishes them: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/brain-babble/20150...

This is different from tetrachromacy, where some women really do see more colors: https://www.optimax.co.uk/blog/tetrachromacy-superhuman-visi...

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#115

Post by skhr0680 »

sleepy_keita wrote: post #25

This reminds me of when I took my drivers' license test in Japan -- they'll do an eye exam including whether you can recognize the colors. The first color was this weird mix between blue and green, and when the administrator asked me what color was showing, it took me a moment to try to find a word to describe the color... then I realized, I'm at the DMV, they want "ao", so that's what I said.

I passed that with flying colors by saying グリーン

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#116

Post by roer »

skhr0680 wrote: post #106
lewispollard wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesn’t actually matter what convention they pick, so long as everyone agrees on it and sticks to it. That would be a good point, if that actually happened, but Japanese traffic lights have a mixture of green for go and blue for go (with most of them being green).

Can you tell me the location of an actual blue traffic light in Japan?

I went ahead and geoguessr'd one of the images of a "blue" traffic light, and came to the following: https://maps.app.goo.gl/EjYmH34YC19y3fVt9

There is another one to the right as well. They look very blue when turned off, but cyan/green when turned on.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#118

Post by chrisdsaldivar »

doubled112 wrote: post #109
vages wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am looking out my hotel room window in Hiroshima in this very instant, and I even got my wife to confirm it: The traffic lights definitely are GREEN.

I'm glad you mentioned that you had your wife confirm, because I'm convinced my wife sees more colours than I do, and I can't be the only one. I've had this exact discussion. What colour is this? Blue. No, can't you see it's green? Maybe it has some green in it Okay, so is it blue or green? Yes! Why did you ask me then?

Yes, on average women can perceive more colors than men [1]

Anecdotally, in high school we all took this test for a class [2] and the girls did a lot better than us. Although some guys were able to score pretty well on it. I don’t remember if this was the exact test but it’s very similar.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21675035/

[2] https://www.xrite.com/hue-test

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#119

Post by galangalalgol »

Izkata wrote: post #114
doubled112 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you mentioned that you had your wife confirm, because I'm convinced my wife sees more colours than I do, and I can't be the only one. I've had this exact discussion. What colour is this? Blue. No, can't you see it's green? Maybe it has some green in it Okay, so is it blue or green? Yes! Why did you ask me then?

Maybe not more colors, but more easily distinguishes them: https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/brain-babble/20150... This is different from tetrachromacy, where some women really do see more colors: https://www.optimax.co.uk/blog/tetrachromacy-superhuman-visi...

The mothers of some red-green colorblind children are tetra chromatic, so they actually see more. I think hexa chromatic also exists.

Edit: somehow didn't notice you'd linked this.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#120

Post by fenomas »

skhr0680 wrote: post #113
fenomas wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, midori (green) is a type of ao ("grue"), and.. It isn't. TFA is vague on this, but in modern usage "ao" just means blue. There are a bunch of set phrases where it refers to various other cool colors, but to a modern listener "ao" on its own isn't a category including all those colors, it just means blue.

You’re going to have to define modern usage because words where ao=green are still common in every day language, like seishun or aoba

In set phrases it can refer to things of various colors, but on its own it means blue. Like if you use it to describe a sweater, people will assume you mean a blue sweater.
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