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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

#71

Post by psychoslave »

troad wrote: post #55
psychoslave wrote: post #40

Common, not a single mention of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://www.verywellmind.com/the-sapir-whorf-hypothesis-7565...

No, because it is discredited pseudo-science.

Even taking this as premise, it doesn’t mean it should not be mentioned.

Knowledge that some hypothesis where disproved is also crucially important to understating and formation of sounder models.

Regarding the adequacy of the assertion itself, every reader should judge by themselves to which level it extends.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#72

Post by f33d5173 »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #54
Prcmaker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned this lesson in my first ever public lecture. Approximately 10% of my audience had some form of colour blindness, rendering the majority of my figures incapable of communicating their intent. Since then I have rendered all figures for public consumption in black and white, and lines instead of surfaces where possible.

Depending on what exactly your figures were/are, you might benefit from the viridis colour map, available in matplotlib and R (and probably in many other places). It's colourful, so those without colour blindness get a richer display than if you used greyscale, and the colours chosen aren't too affected by most common forms of colour blindness. But for those that really can't see the colours, even if you literally ju…

Am I wrong that in that article magma appears to do better? Particularly in the last two (red-blind and grayscale), it seems like viridis looks the same for large parts of the scale, while magma retains its distinction.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#73

Post by vinnyvichy »

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…

As an sort of counterbalancing aside, there are two common japanese words for red, the slightly less well known to foreigners is the name for the color of the sun on the japanese flag: beni/kurenai (a deeper red). Well Chinese has the parallel kanjis too but as far as I understand it for the Chinese the semantic values are flipped: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-%E8%B5%...

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#74

Post by psychoslave »

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…

Did you ever tested the Stroop effect in a language, and how it effects depending on the proficiency in that language?

Language is certainly not the sole factor of conscious interpretation of all phenomena, stimuli and mechanisms that induce it, but it definitely is a factor with measurable effects.

And probably this is a skill where individual feel like the largest degree of freedom — the topic of whether this feeling is a mental illusion or backed on hard-wired physics is a distinct point.

Trying to destroy credibility of whole class of people striking them with an anathema like "mysticism" implies forgetting a bit quickly that Descarte’s grand scheme of thought came to live thanks to three dreams, Newton was found of alchemy and Russel dedicated a whole essay specifically to "Mysticism and Logic".

> I assure you I see these colours the same as you do.

Maybe not if I’m colour blind, right?

Now, this is not to promote the extreme other side: I don’t believe in an "absolute relativism" that would allow culture to shape arbitrary anything anyway regardless of any fundamental conditions that enabled human beings to form.

But certainly there a whole set of shade between this two poles (and beyond the linear spectrum they induce).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroop_effect

https://www.cairn.info/qu-est-ce-que-rever--9782749256627-pa...

https://www.philomag.com/articles/le-reve-de-descartes

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25447/25447-h/25447-h.htm

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#75

Post by city41 »

cthalupa wrote: post #57

Other people have covered the linguistic aspect enough so no need for me to rehash it, but, the picture in that article is far more blue than any traffic light I've seen in Tokyo in my months there. If I had to describe them with a single word, I'd choose green without hesitation - they just have a bit of a blue tinge to them. Some example photos from google image that look closest to what I've seen: https://www.pond…

The article seems to imply outside of Tokyo with "Elsewhere around the island" and perhaps "Drive around Japan long enough". It would be nice if the article was more specific here, but it's also just a Reader's Digest summary.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#76

Post by city41 »

Toutouxc wrote: post #13
mathieuh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic lights are still fine for colour-blind people aren't they? The order of the lights doesn't change.

Funny thing, I'm NOT colorblind and apparently I only rely on the color. I've been driving for over 10 years now, mostly in the capital that has traffic lights everywhere, and sitting at my desk now not looking at a traffic light, I wouldn't want to bet money on the order.

I always assumed red was at the top as it's the most important. It's the first one to peak out behind tall trucks.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#77

Post by bombcar »

cthalupa wrote: post #57

Other people have covered the linguistic aspect enough so no need for me to rehash it, but, the picture in that article is far more blue than any traffic light I've seen in Tokyo in my months there. If I had to describe them with a single word, I'd choose green without hesitation - they just have a bit of a blue tinge to them. Some example photos from google image that look closest to what I've seen: https://www.pond…

I've seen almost-blue stop lights (go lights?) in the USA, and before everything was LED the color variation between various lights was pretty wide. You could almost always figure it out in context, but absolutely speaking some red lights were almost as yellow as some other light's yellow.

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#78

Post by naniwaduni »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #66
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.

How do you think this happened? By westernization?

Consider: is "red hair" a color you would consider "red" in a generic context? How about "red cabbage"? Are they the same color?

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#79

Post by hnfong »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #39
iopq wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I'm not doubting that multiple languages have that aspect to it, but as far as I know that does not result in blue traffic lights. I have not heard of an instance of a blue traffic light in China to go with your Chinese example.

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 light in China just hinges on the fact that people don't commonly refer to the "green" in traffic lights as 青 in China (but you could). The word 青 is used to refer to a broad spectrum of green and blue in different contexts, just happens people generally refer to the traffic lights as "綠" instead. And since there's no ambiguity to "綠" there's no confusion of whether the traffic lights should be "green" or "blue", and thus you don't see blue traffic in China (hopefully).

Re: Why Japan has blue traffic lights instead of green

#80

Post by bombcar »

city41 wrote: post #76
Toutouxc wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny thing, I'm NOT colorblind and apparently I only rely on the color. I've been driving for over 10 years now, mostly in the capital that has traffic lights everywhere, and sitting at my desk now not looking at a traffic light, I wouldn't want to bet money on the order.

I always assumed red was at the top as it's the most important. It's the first one to peak out behind tall trucks.

Some places have the lights sideways, and usually red is on the left, but it's not always consistent.

If I were designing them I'd always have the red be noticeably larger.

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