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They 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.
Maybe Korea also had blue traffic lights in the past. But they still call green traffic lights 'blue' even though all of them use a green coloured light. I think the use of blue to mean both blue and green has also been present in Korea for a long time. I wonder where it came from? In my limited experience if Korea and Japan share something culturally it often has its common derivation in Chineese tradition.
青天 - clear skies
青草 - green grass
清葡萄 - 청포도 - white grape
I used to wonder, as a kid, why most traffic lights in my region of Germany were red, orange-yellow and obviously turquoise. I remember drawing traffic lights (I loved drawing road layouts when I was young) without any use for the green pen. Nowadays, they all seem to be very much green, at least the new LED ones.
They 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?
綠 is used in Japanese for the color of green tea, but they use 青 for the green light
There's also 翠 in Japanese to mean a bright green, which in Chinese also has a blue connotation (based on the color of the kingfisher who dives 淬 to catch fish)
They 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They 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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They speak of this as if it was a Japan-only thing. Which other countries have blue traffic lights?
In China, for example, the word for green 綠 is used for the light 綠 is used in Japanese for the color of green tea, but they use 青 for the green light There's also 翠 in Japanese to mean a bright green, which in Chinese also has a blue connotation (based on the color of the kingfisher who dives 淬 to catch fish)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-sapir-whorf-hypothesis-7565...