Not entirely related, but I've always wondered if what I see as, for example, blue is the same you see as blue. Then there are people with tetrachromacy who just see way more colors than you or me. By the way, magenta surprised me! When I studied linguistics, we learned about a study that proved that men know way fewer names for colors than women.
Another aspect of humanity, language, and perception that proves that we all are individuals :)
About magenta: can you imagine, the spell checker didn't accept it?! Maybe it was made by a man... ;) Also, it made a mess of all the gray/grey - I should better clean that up.
I do think that quite a lot of people spend very little of their mental capacity on colours - learning about them, registering them, and naming them. It is also well-known that we see and talk about colours in different ways across the world, with some cultures having several varieties of a colour that other cultures do not see at all.
It is not just a physical phenomenon: if we in some corner of the world would agree on calling the sun green, then it would affect our way of seeing and thinking about other things green. Our minds would adapt and accept that sunshine is just a flavour of green.
Colours are fascinating! Just now, I look at the many tiny icons on the tabs of my web browser, where I have very many tabs open, so that they each fight for a thin slice of the screen real estate. These colours are mostly bright and clear, reminding me of the early computer colours, something like 8 different strong colours, including black and white. But then I also have the bookmarks list open (as Google Chrome can do it, on the right side of the browser) - it is open on my cooking folder, as I have just cooked a moussaka and didn't remember the details, so I looked them up. All the food pictures have warm shades of ochre, saffron, or pale green - some are brownish red, as there are tomatoes in the dishes, but none of the food pictures have bright and clear colours.
We expect one range of colours on the computer, another on the food. We expect different colours, sounds, temperatures, and many other sensations for all the different areas of knowledge we have. I bet that we even connect all of these sensory inputs to each other in our memories, making something taste differently for us if it has a different colour.
I always mess up grey and gray because I attended a British elementary school. So don't worry. It happens.
I don't know if people are lazy (some are, for sure), but the explanation I got back in the day is that professions that dealt with colors (for example, sewing) were often in the women's sphere. That must have changed by now, for sure. But I do know if I ask my husband to hand me the coral shirt, he'll look at me baffled until his mind computes that it's the orange shirt for him. Never mind about magenta or shedron (is that a color in English?). It's a lost cause with him.
But, of course, colors matter! As you say, they are a cultural barometer about what matters for certain cultures. You can read this article if you are a linguistics freak like me https://www.sapiens.org/language/color-perception/
They influence our psychology and shape our daily lives. I don't know about you, but if I see something blue in the supermarket, I'll assume it's "low fat" because we're conditioned like that. They also bring back memories. If you ask me the color of my childhood, I'd say red, probably because I went through a quirky phase where I refused to wear anything but the same red dress for a year, haha.
More men than women have some kind of colour blindness, so this could explain it partly, if women are expected to be the colourists.
About chedron (with this spelling) - yes, it does exist in English, but doesn't seem to very much used. It is named after a precious stone, I think? Here is one example that I could find: https://www.colourlovers.com/color/BE5A02/chedron
I bet there are very many names for the same colours, when looking around the globe. But then again, if people put meaning into the colour name, like you do with blue, and like the above omniglot-article claims that the French may do with chaudron, they may not even see the same colour, not feel the same when seeing it.
Not entirely related, but I've always wondered if what I see as, for example, blue is the same you see as blue. Then there are people with tetrachromacy who just see way more colors than you or me. By the way, magenta surprised me! When I studied linguistics, we learned about a study that proved that men know way fewer names for colors than women.
Another aspect of humanity, language, and perception that proves that we all are individuals :)
About magenta: can you imagine, the spell checker didn't accept it?! Maybe it was made by a man... ;) Also, it made a mess of all the gray/grey - I should better clean that up.
I do think that quite a lot of people spend very little of their mental capacity on colours - learning about them, registering them, and naming them. It is also well-known that we see and talk about colours in different ways across the world, with some cultures having several varieties of a colour that other cultures do not see at all.
It is not just a physical phenomenon: if we in some corner of the world would agree on calling the sun green, then it would affect our way of seeing and thinking about other things green. Our minds would adapt and accept that sunshine is just a flavour of green.
Colours are fascinating! Just now, I look at the many tiny icons on the tabs of my web browser, where I have very many tabs open, so that they each fight for a thin slice of the screen real estate. These colours are mostly bright and clear, reminding me of the early computer colours, something like 8 different strong colours, including black and white. But then I also have the bookmarks list open (as Google Chrome can do it, on the right side of the browser) - it is open on my cooking folder, as I have just cooked a moussaka and didn't remember the details, so I looked them up. All the food pictures have warm shades of ochre, saffron, or pale green - some are brownish red, as there are tomatoes in the dishes, but none of the food pictures have bright and clear colours.
We expect one range of colours on the computer, another on the food. We expect different colours, sounds, temperatures, and many other sensations for all the different areas of knowledge we have. I bet that we even connect all of these sensory inputs to each other in our memories, making something taste differently for us if it has a different colour.
Colours matter!
I always mess up grey and gray because I attended a British elementary school. So don't worry. It happens.
I don't know if people are lazy (some are, for sure), but the explanation I got back in the day is that professions that dealt with colors (for example, sewing) were often in the women's sphere. That must have changed by now, for sure. But I do know if I ask my husband to hand me the coral shirt, he'll look at me baffled until his mind computes that it's the orange shirt for him. Never mind about magenta or shedron (is that a color in English?). It's a lost cause with him.
But, of course, colors matter! As you say, they are a cultural barometer about what matters for certain cultures. You can read this article if you are a linguistics freak like me https://www.sapiens.org/language/color-perception/
They influence our psychology and shape our daily lives. I don't know about you, but if I see something blue in the supermarket, I'll assume it's "low fat" because we're conditioned like that. They also bring back memories. If you ask me the color of my childhood, I'd say red, probably because I went through a quirky phase where I refused to wear anything but the same red dress for a year, haha.
More men than women have some kind of colour blindness, so this could explain it partly, if women are expected to be the colourists.
About chedron (with this spelling) - yes, it does exist in English, but doesn't seem to very much used. It is named after a precious stone, I think? Here is one example that I could find: https://www.colourlovers.com/color/BE5A02/chedron
From this post, it could look like the colour name is mostly a Mexican phenomenon? https://www.omniglot.com/bloggle/?p=744
I bet there are very many names for the same colours, when looking around the globe. But then again, if people put meaning into the colour name, like you do with blue, and like the above omniglot-article claims that the French may do with chaudron, they may not even see the same colour, not feel the same when seeing it.