Quote:
Originally Posted by seamus
Rosa, did you talk yet about tribes in the deep jungle aren't able to distinguish between blue and green because they haven't created the category of "blue"?
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!!!!! I actually received an email last night with this link about that study:
Language Log » Himba color perception
It turns out that result was totally fabricated by the documentary film makers. That tribe CAN distinguish blue and green, they are just much slower to detect green on a blue background because they lack the color term. We have known for a long time that language influences our sensitivity to color category boundaries. In Russian there are two really distinct words for blue and light blue (akin to our words for red and pink--pink really is just light red). As a result, Russian speakers can more quickly and accurately detect light blue on a blue background than English speakers. But that doesn't mean English speakers can't see light blue. It's the same with that tribe. The problem is the film makers either didn't get this subtlety or just decided to fucking lie. It's kind of shocking really.