One day, I attended a class in grad school about cross-cultural communication, since a lot of foreign students are studying this/things related to this in grad school. The students were quite multicultural. Then, a foreign student asked an interesting question. The student asked about how we say green, red and yellow for describing colors of a traffic signal, but these are described as blue, red and yellow in Japanese. I am still confused about this because it looks like nothing but green.
The professor asked the other students, “What colors do you say for a traffic signal in your language?” All the students but the Japanese said it is called green and looks green. A hot discussion took place in the classroom about this color description problem.
Then, the professor explained the reason why it is called blue. The word green was a newly made-up word in Japanese. The word blue was covering the color green in the past. For example, Japanese people tend to say, “Blue leaves in the wood” instead of green leaves in the wood. Even in English, Jamaica’s famous mountain is called the Blue Mountain because when people see the mountain far away from there, it seems like blue.
After I took the class, I thought about how language influences people’s senses and their recognition. It might be an interesting theme to dig into.
original version
One day, I attended the class in the grad school about cross cultural communication. Since a lot of foreign students are studying in the grad school and its theme. Classroom members were quite multi cultural. And then, one interesting theme was asked by a foreign student. The student questioned that we say green red yellow for describing colors of traffic signal but these are described “blue” red and yellow in Japanese. I am still confusing about this because it is nothing but green.
Professor asked to other students “what do you say colors of a traffic signal in your language?” All other students but Japanese said it is said as green and looks green. Hot discussion took place in the classroom about this color description problem.
And then, professor explains the reason why it is called blue. The word green was newly made up word in Japanese. The word blue was covering color of green in the past. For example, Japanese tends to say “blue leaves in the wood” instead of green leaves in the wood. Even in English Jamaica’s famous mountain is called the blue mountain because when people see the mountain far away from there, it seems like blue.
After I the class, how language influence to people’s sense and their recognition. It might be an interesting theme to dig in.
