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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

#141

Post by adrian_b »

mgaunard wrote: post #62
PinguTS wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you come, that they had no distinction between blue and green? The Greek had no word for blue, which is the reason Homer described the sky with different words. But I never heard that the sky was green-isch. While on the other side the Greek had more similarities between green and yellow.

The Greek said the sea was green, for example; so did the Romans. The Romans did have a word for blue, but it only applied to the sky.

The Romans used the word "viridis" both for green and for blue-green.

Nevertheless, when they wanted to describe more precisely a color, for example when Pliny the Elder had to explain the difference in color between emeralds and beryls, they used expressions like "green like the leaves" or "green like the grass" for green, and "green like the littoral sea" for blue-green.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#143

Post by ensignavenger »

2143 wrote: post #86

Just a data point that I want to put out there. I have long heard that Japan has blue traffic lights. Earlier this year I visited Japan. Because I had heard about the blue traffic light situation, I paid special attention to the traffic lights. They all appeared green to me. In both Tokyo and Osaka. Okay maybe a tinge of blue if you look at it and wonder 'is this blue?' , but the only reason I wondered was because I…

I have been to Japan a couple of times. The first time I was there in 2016 many of the lights were very blue with hint of green. I noticed when I was there over the summer that the lights were getting greener, many of them pretty much just green. I think they have been transitioning, perhaps as they have updated to LED lights or something they have been making them more green?

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#144

Post by bluejekyll »

One thing I discovered when buying some custom plates made from old traffic signals was that while the glass for red and yellow were obviously those colors, the glass for “green” was actually blue.

They appear green because of the warmer light that incandescent bulbs give off. I imagine that things transition to LED they’ll choose warmer light frequencies to continue this effect? https://mytrafficlights.com/why-does-the-green-lens-on-my-tr...

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#145

Post by Retric »

BurningFrog wrote: post #132
troad wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The "fuzzy clouds" argument is both true and important. But there also are some basic truths about human vision. We only see three "simplified" different colors, red, blue and green, and other nuances are interpolations our brains make. There is infinitely more frequency information in light that we just don't pick up. So I would expect that the primary colors red/blue/green, which are grounded in human physiology, w…

The color receptors in your eyes don’t actually correspond with red, blue, and green with the same wavelengths being able to trigger multiple receptors. On top of this your retina absorbs more blue light as you age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell#/media/File:Cone-fun...

So, defining the separation between Red, Blue, and Green is really fairly arbitrary.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#146

Post by fenomas »

skhr0680 wrote: post #134
fenomas wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If those words and others were more obscure I’d agree with your point, but they really are common enough that I think Aoi can mean blue or green in nodern Japanese.

Obscurity isn't involved. In set phrases like you're talking about, the "ao" is basically a category specifier, not a color specifier. Like aoba means young fresh leaves, not necessarily green ones, and aoyasai doesn't only mean green vegetables, etc. There are lots of set phrases like this, both obscure and common, and the color involved can be anything from white to dark gray.

But when ao is used outside of a set phrase, to tell somebody what color you're talking about, it means blue.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#147

Post by silveira »

mcpackieh wrote: post #98
troad wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In English, things that are orange are often called red. Particularly, but not limited to, hair.

I heard it is because the word "orange" is much newer. There were very few things orange in Europe before they saw the tropical fruit orange. Carrots and other things that are orange today were not orange back then.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#148

Post by doubled112 »

vijaykiran wrote: post #133
doubled112 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently watched a YouTube video about how "brown" is only a colour because we call it one, but it is really "dark orange" with context.

This one https://youtu.be/wh4aWZRtTwU?si=OZcgqx82umx67VWo probably

That's the one.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#149

Post by wolverine876 »

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…

> Words are not perception. This is such a pernicious bit of nonsense

> pseudo-intellectual mysticism

The influence of words on perception is backed by a lot of research and expertise, and seems apparent on a concrete level: The words I choose affect others perceptions; people who make their living in persuasion (political leaders, opinion leaders, 'influencers', etc) put great effort into chosing words that will influence perception, and they do it to great success.

Why do you think otherwise?

What makes you say otherwise? When you say 'pernicious', that implies negative intent - whose intent? (If that's not meant literally, I take back this particular question.)

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#150

Post by Aloha »

chrisdsaldivar wrote: post #118
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?

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

Apparently my color perception is as good as I've always thought it was. I scored a 0 on that.
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