As mentioned, aoi ringo (blue apple) is a common term. When I moved to Japan many years ago, on my first visit to a McDonald's, I was initially excited then let down by the prospect of getting a "blue apple" milkshake.
Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
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Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#22They speak of this as if it was a Japan-only thing. The blue-green distinction is a late feature of most languages. Even Greek and Latin did not have as clear a distinction as we have today.
> They speak of this as if it was a Japan-only thing.
Which other countries have blue traffic lights?
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#23The Reader's Digest article is just a mediocre summary of the Atlas Obscura one it links to: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japan-green-traffic-li... Although the latter does contain a complete misrepresentation of what "grue" means. The explanation is still unsatisfying. Japan had green lights, referred to in law by a word which means blue but has traditionally encompassed green as well. Pedants pointed out t…
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AO may not work for you, but OP's link to rd.com doesn't work for me - I'm getting some difficult captchas from cloudflare that don't let me visit that site.
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
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AO may not work for you, but OP's link to rd.com doesn't work for me - I'm getting some difficult captchas from cloudflare that don't let me visit that site.
For those that are as confused as me, in the comment above "ao" refers to "Atlas Obscura" not to blue in Japanese.
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#25This 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.
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#26They speak of this as if it was a Japan-only thing. The blue-green distinction is a late feature of most languages. Even Greek and Latin did not have as clear a distinction as we have today.
viridis / caeruleum
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#27Color 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.
Traffic lights are still fine for colour-blind people aren't they? The order of the lights doesn't change.
Horizontal lights are not consistent across countries. The linked article has an image of a Japanese horizontal traffic light with red on the right, whereas an American traffic light would have red on the left.
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#28Color 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.
Traffic lights are still fine for colour-blind people aren't they? The order of the lights doesn't change.
Most color blind have issue to see shades and subtle differences. They see red and green just fine.
The people who do not see red at all however, see red as black. So, they do not see red traffic light at all.
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#29Not 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 have you believe that a MacBook is very different from a laptop and belongs in its own category, but to me I would still lump it under laptops. If I was presented with a MacBook, a desktop and a tablet and was asked to pick out the laptop, then it would be clear to me that the MacBook is the correct choice.
Now, midori (green) is a type of ao ("grue"), and ao, kiiro (yellow) and aka (red) are all colours. English speakers argue that green is very different from blue and that they're different colours, but to Japanese speakers ao encompasses midori. If a Japanese speaker was presented with the colours green, yellow and red and was asked to pick out ao (in the context of traffic lights), then it would be clear that green is the correct choice.
There are loads of situations where words in two languages seem to directly correspond to each other, but still they are subtly different especially when the nuances of the words are considered.
Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green
#30Color 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.
Traffic lights are still fine for colour-blind people aren't they? The order of the lights doesn't change.
> The order of the lights doesn't change.
For 3 lights streetlights no. For 2 lights streetlights it depends. They can be (in DE) either red and yellow or yellow or green.