Some languages have more words for colors than others, but how does this affect how we see them? It could make a big difference. Lithuanian has two main terms for blue, žydra and mėlyna, meaning light blue and dark blue respectively. In Norwegian, blue is blå no matter the shade. For a series of experiments, scientists recruited a number of people who spoke both Lithuanian and Norwegian, and administered a color discrimination test in which the subject was asked to pick one of two shades of blue that most closely resembled a reference picture. When the test was conducted in Lithuanian, both the accuracy and the speed of the discrimination was significantly better than when the same subjects took the test in Norwegian. Further experiments added people who only spoke one of those languages and found the same results.
While those results are intriguing, it opens up other questions, We know that women can discriminate between colors better than men on average. Could that be because women use more language terms for various shades? Show a woman something blue, and she will describe it as navy, cobalt, periwinkle, turquoise, azure, royal blue, cyan, robin's egg, seafoam, indigo, or baby blue. A man would identify it as blue, even using the same language. Obviously, more research is indicated. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Allenfleming)