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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

#151

Post by marcosdumay »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #125
crazygringo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And orange juice is actually yellow. Which really blows some people's minds. "Well it's a little bit orange." No it's not, not your regular American bottled or fresh OJ. Straight-up yellow. (Not denying there are varieties that produce more orange-color juice, like tangerines. But that's not what's on 99% of Americans' breakfast tables.)

It's juice of the fruit-called-orange. How is that not orange juice? We don't call apple juice "red juice" or grape juice "purple juice". If there's a language in the world where the color and the fruit aren't the same word, I've yet to learn it.

> If there's a language in the world where the color and the fruit aren't the same word, I've yet to learn it.

The fruit has the color orange when it's ripe. It's probably one of the most orange things you'll see on nature.

But most people don't even eat it ripe (throwing it away before that point), and the association between the fruit and the color just flies over a lot of people's heads. And yeah, the internals of most of them are yellow.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#152

Post by yamazakiwi »

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…

It depends on where you are in Japan, it's mostly Green but there are some Blue ones occasionally.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#153

Post by dragonwriter »

crazygringo wrote: post #104
mcpackieh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And orange juice is actually yellow. Which really blows some people's minds. "Well it's a little bit orange." No it's not, not your regular American bottled or fresh OJ. Straight-up yellow. (Not denying there are varieties that produce more orange-color juice, like tangerines. But that's not what's on 99% of Americans' breakfast tables.)

> Which really blows some people's minds. "Well it's a little bit orange." No it's not, not your regular American bottled or fresh OJ. Straight-up yellow.

Well, it wouldn't be that weird if you were right because we name fruit juices after the fruit, not the juice color, but I’ve never seen orange juice that wasn't distinctly on the orange side of yellow, even if its more yellow than orange, including fresh and bottled American orange juices.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#154

Post by thaumasiotes »

fenomas wrote: post #108
hnfong wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This discussion is weird, because the Kanji 青 in Japanese was borrowed from classical Chinese (presumably during the Tang dynasty around the 7th to 9th century). So using Chinese as an example of "another language" having green-blue confusion isn't very meaningful since modern Chinese aka Mandarin also inherits pretty much the same 青 albeit popular usage differs somewhat. Yet the fact that there's no blue traffic lig…

The word "ao" in Old Japanese already had the blue/green confusion before the character 青 was borrowed to write it, so if classical Chinese did as well I guess that would be two such languages.

> The word "ao" in Old Japanese already had the blue/green confusion before the character 青 was borrowed to write it

What would the evidence for this be? It's clear that the word "ao" does not derive from the Chinese pronunciation of 青. But its meaning could easily have shifted under the influence of the spelling. Do we have a source that writes the word without spelling it 青?

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#155

Post by irrational »

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

Oh, I’ve taken that test before. I’m a man, but I got a perfect score. I’ve always had a very easy time distinguishing shades and hues of color.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#156

Post by wolverine876 »

woolion wrote: post #47

If you read any Chinese/Japanese literature, for example Buddhist or zen texts, it is very common to encounter very weird uses of the words blue or green-- because they mean things that somebody used to these distinct categories will classify nature according to these boxes. Trees are green, bodies of water blue -- even if that is more complex than that, some pines can be very blue, rivers or lakes can be much greene…

> because they mean things that somebody used to these distinct categories will classify nature according to these boxes.

Very interesting. Could you explain this part in a little more detail?

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#157

Post by thaumasiotes »

NeoTar wrote: post #123
IshKebab wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and they also don't realise that "one word for two colours" is just nonsensical. All words are descriptions for a continuous range of colours. Oa apparently just covers a particularly huge range. But you could equally say "ha those stupid English people only have one word for lilac and purple. Idiots!"

I think the most common real-world example is Russian and Italian, which have a specific word for light-blue which is distinct from the word for blue. I assume this is like how ‘pink’ is a special word for ‘light-red’.

You see the same thing in other areas. In Mandarin Chinese, the sounds represented by "si" in English vision or "r" in English virile are the same sound.

An English speaker (like speakers of many other languages) would find this ridiculous, but it is true that the two sounds represent either side of a completely arbitrary threshold applied to a continuous phenomenon.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#158

Post by marcosdumay »

bluGill wrote: post #85
acadapter wrote: post #4

Color blindness compatible design is, IMO, a very neglected part of the equality debate, in many other fields. This disability has a very skewed gender ratio due to how it works genetically.

Most green lights in the US have a blue tint so that color blind people can see the blue. Most but not all, which is really frustrating as a colorblind person. More than once I've been sitting at a light until my wife told me it was green as there is one light near me without that blue tint. (we are making a left turn so light has both the round red stop light and the green left turn arrow on at the same time)

I'm pretty sure the international agreement on road signaling completely forbids any stop and go light from being on the same place, so that you can distinguish them without depending on any color.

But well, the US never follows any agreement it signs, so yeah, that happens.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#159

Post by lionkor »

account42 wrote: post #139
kryptozinc wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you would know if you read the article :)

Are you sure? This seems to be the full article: > www.rd.com > Checking if the site connection is secure > www.rd.com needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding.

weird, maybe you have to send them your blood, fingerprints, and a list of your favorite laundry detergents in order to get through?

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#160

Post by adrian_b »

Tistron wrote: post #45
dotancohen wrote: post #19

I believe that Greek, too, lacks a word for blue. Modern Greek speakers just use the English word blue as "mple" where "mp" stands in for the B sound which has no distinct letter in modern Greek.

Surprised me, and I wondered what sound Beta signifies in modern Greek. Apparently /v/.

In Modern Greek, the voiced plosives of Ancient Greek, i.e. beta, delta and gamma, have become voiced fricatives, while the aspirated plosives of Ancient Greek have become voiceless fricatives.

To deal with the voiced plosives that are present in many modern loanwords, from languages like English, they had to develop ways to write them, using the existing letters of their alphabet, and the solution was to use digraphs, like "mp" for English "b".

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