Lingthusiasm Episode 5: Colour words around the world and inside your brain
Red, orange, yellow, grue, and purple? Not so fast – while many languages don’t distinguish between green and blue, it’s unlikely that a language would lump these two together while also having distinct words for “orange” and “purple”.
But how do we know this? What kinds of ways do different languages carve up the colour spectrum? Why does English say “redhead” instead of “orangehead”? How do colour words interact with smells, reading, and the human brain? In episode 5 of the podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, your hosts Lauren and Gretchen talk about what linguistic typology and psycholinguistics can tell us about colour words.
We also chat about Lauren’s archiving work, and the iGesto gesture conference, and Gretchen’s upcoming ICLDC conference adventures.
Here are the links mentioned in this episode:
Happy new episode!
We talk about colour, and the words people use for it across languages. I wanted to share a picture of of a Munsell chip set, because I find them very soothing. `This one is from the Wikipedia page on Munsell chips, which gives some detail on how Albert H. Munsell came up with the system of colour grading in the early 20th century.
(via lingthusiasm)