There is an article in this week's NYTimes about colors, language, and perception, and I was fascinated to learn that English is one of the few languages to distinguish between blue and green. For instance, apparently, Russians do light and dark blues but not green. (Is this like the word "snow" and the Inuits, with all their names for it, except one word like "snow" since they perceive it as different precipitation when we do not??)
In our Chinese class we learned blue yesterday, "lan se." We already knew green, "le se" (I think that's the Pinyin). "Se" is added to all the color names (unless the color is being used as an adjective, I think). So I guess they differentiate the colors too. Or has English influenced them?
Anyway, sometimes the kiddos get confused. Yesterday, Sis identified a tree as "green se" and the water as "blue se."
I'm fascinated by how they learn language, especially because they pronounce it better than I do, even if they are slower to remember new words.
We only need purple and then will have the whole rainbow!
(Hmmm, do people see the rainbow differently? Does the gay flag confuse the Russians?)
No comments:
Post a Comment