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Comment by franciscop | Hacker News Reader

In Japan the traffic light will go green, and if you ask they'll look at you straight at your face and say "it's blue". There's even a wikipedia page noting this for every culture, see how in Japan green is a tone of blue and only came after the WWII:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction...

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It has been long understood in linguistics that languages don't divide the continuous spectrum of light wavelengths into the same buckets of arbitrary color words. It is just as well understood that this doesn't have any impact on peoples' ability to perceive those wavelengths.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity#Colour_t...

https://journals.openedition.org/estetica/1797

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2660766

Although Japanese does in fact have a word for green, which matches the traffic lights, but still calls them blue.

Blue includes green, so they’re not wrong.

Yeah, and in English, people constantly confuse Pink (light red) with Magenta (red+blue). Our notion of Blue isn't so pure either, since it's considered acceptable to call Cyan a type of blue, yet no one would ever make the mistake of calling Red and Orange by the same name. That's already halfway to thinking that Green is also a type of blue.

I thought that the "idiomatic pink" in fact is the "Magenta" mixture of blue/violet and red wavelengths and the "neutral light red" produced by mixing "pure red" with "pure white" you call "Pink" would be commonly perceived as "bland" or "washed out" or "too yellowish" compared to the "Magenta pink" as you call it (?)

In other words, that the colour that is commonly called "pink" and occurs in nature has always somewhat bluish tint, while the "neutral pink" you refer to is somewhat rare in the nature.

In computer terms, named colour `pink` is

    rgb(100% 75% 80%)

whilst the "neutral pink" of the same lightness would possibly be a darkened variant of the the `misty rose` what is defined as

    rgb(100% 89% 88%)

Arguably the "blue" accent in computer `pink` could be an adjustment addressing some technical display peculiarities, but I like to think that the real reason for the standardised `pink` being really "light magenta" is the intent to adhere to the natural counterparts (and resulting common language).

Look at how yellowish the "darkened mistyrose" rgb(100% 77% 77%) appears compared to "pink"

    <p style="background: pink">
    <p style="background: rgb(100% 75% 80%)">
    <p style="background: rgb(100% 77% 77%)">
    <p style="background: rgb(100%, 89%, 88%)">
    <p style="background: mistyrose">

https://myfonj.github.io/sandbox.html#%3C!doctype%20html%3E%...

I was taught that “green” (midori) is basically only for vegetation and things you want to say are similar to it. Even green apples are “blue” (aoi).

No, that's wrong. It's perfectly normal to use 青 for vegetation, e.g. 青葉. And it's perfectly normal to use 緑色 for everyday non-vegetation things (e.g. on a quick search I found clothes, cars, wallets...)

wlonkly on Oct 24, 2023 | root | parent | next [–]

The article talks about the specification and it's more... specific than that: > “In 1973, the government mandated through a cabinet order that traffic lights use the bluest shade of green possible—still technically green, but noticeably blue enough to justifiably continue using the ao nomenclature,” Allan Richarz writes for Atlas Obscura

https://www.rd.com/article/heres-japan-blue-traffic-lights/

In America I will go outside with my beard, and if you ask they'll look straight at my face and say "it's red."

It's roughly the color of the HN title bar.

> In America I will go outside with my beard

This looks uncannily like the first line of a lost Walt Whitman poem.

I want you to know this made me laugh very hard.

> I want you to know this made me laugh very hard.

Thank you! Then the long-ago time spent in my American Lit classes was not wasted.

Probably because they are too polite to call you ginger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw&t=159s

That video is phenomenal! Thanks for sharing

Most of Tim Minchin's stuff is pretty good. He makes you laugh and think at the same time. The first couple of minutes of that video plays with anagrams of "ginger" and gives a second layer of meaning to the video. A bit more context: Ginger Nuts are a hard biscuit in Australia, frequency dunked in tea to soften them [1] and they are a national institution.

[1] https://www.taste.com.au/food-news/we-just-found-out-arnotts...

I mean white people are not “white”, black people are not “black”, native Americans are not “red” etc.

In English (but also in other languages like my Italian) orange hair is called red because the color orange arrived too late with the orange fruit.

https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/33117530568/why-dont-we...

Simmilar concepts exist for English (and other languages too). Take "white wine" which is not white as milk.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37982495#:~:text=%3E%20....

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