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by yreg 1617 days ago
Different cultures distinguish colours into different classes. You can do an experiment where you give a person sheet of randomly colored pages and ask them to divide them into named stacks.

A western civilisation member might do something like Red, Brown, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Pink, Violet, Grey and perhaps do something special with White/Black. (11 basic colours)

A Russian will most likely split blue into light blue and dark blue. (12 basic colours)

Himba people have 5 basic colours:

Serandu – used to describe reds, browns, oranges and some yellows

Dambu – includes a variety of greens, reds, beige and yellows

Zuzu – used to described most dark colours, black, dark red, dark purple, dark blue, etc.

Vapa – used for some yellows and white

Buru – used to describe a collection of greens and blues

1 comments

When I was a kid, it was "obvious" to me that dark green and light green were two completely different colors, and it frustrated me to no end that people wouldn't agree with me, yet insist that pink and red were different colors.