How the Colors Got Their Names | Otherwords

[@EllieK_814]

Fun fact: The French 'blanc', meaning 'white', ultimately traces back to the same PIE root as the English word 'black'. One took the meaning of brightness out of the fire that burns, the other took the meaning of darkness from the result of the burning.

[@charlessalzman4377]

Same with many of the romance languages words for white: Spanish - blanca, Portuguese - branca, Italian - bianca.

[@likebot.]

I'm not educated in the area, but my opinion is that Old Norse "blikr" meaning ash-colored has something to do with that. It was used to mean light colors like pale yellow (deep yellow was considered red), white, light pink, pale blue, light grey etc., but maybe the coals in ashes would also be called blikr.

[@luzellemoller6621]

What about blank in English does it come from that? becuace if you think of a blank x then you think of a pure white x

[@fishfox]

​​@@luzellemoller6621you are right. Black and blank has the same root word, back then people didn't really know what exactly is the color or "burnt"? Is it the whitish ash or the charred black soot? Blank, bleach, and various words in italian/spanish like bianca are white.

[@aswalchitra]

English have always been so PESSIMISTIC

[@Mordalon]

Just when I thought Bears couldn't get any more badass, now I learn they are basically like some kind of unnamable lovecraftian entity to ancient Europeans.

[@stannieholt8766]

Wolves too - ancient Romans and some early European peoples also gave them nicknames (along the lines of “lobo”) because it was too dangerous to mention this predator by name.

[@DonnaBarrHerself]

Like we say The Good People.

[@evermote8389]

The Indo-European root for bear is *rkto-, and we can apply typical Germanic sound shifts to make educated guesses. If it followed typical shifts, it would have been *urhtaz in Proto-Germanic - and the typical shifts into Old English could have made this word into *urht, *orht, *roht, or *rought. Compare to “arth” (used in Welsh/Cornish) or “artch” (used in Armenian).

[@imokin86]

In Slavic languages, the bear is the "honey-eater", by the same logic

[@bernardfinucane2061]

It's also common for hunters to avoid using the proper name of the animal they are hunting.

[@kelzbelz313]

Pink used to mean a yellow-green color. Pinking is cutting the edge of fabric in a zigzag to prevent fraying. Dianthus flower petals have a zigzag edge and so they were called pink for their shape. As everyone was referring to this light red flower as pink that eventually became the color name.

[@BlackIndigenousPosse]

CITATION NEEDED!

[@kelzbelz313]

@@BlackIndigenousPosse en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink “The color pink is named after the flowers, pinks,[7] flowering plants in the genus Dianthus, and derives from the frilled edge of the flowers. The verb "to pink" dates from the 14th century and means "to decorate with a perforated or punched pattern" (possibly from German picken, "to peck").[8] It has survived to the current day in pinking shears, hand-held scissors that cut a zig-zagged line to prevent fraying.”

[@thomicrisler9855]

​@@kelzbelz313What about "pink" formerly referring to a yellow-green color?

[@ROBYNMARKOW]

& Blue meant “Wine Dark “in Ancient Greek.

[@tux_duh]

​@@ROBYNMARKOW well not exactly, the greeks didnt have a name for the color blue so described blue things like the sky or sea as wine

[@PokhrajRoy.]

As someone who studied about colours in Linguistics class, you have no idea how excited this makes me 👏🏽

[@geoluhread1565]

As someone whose favorite color is orange, geoluhread is an incredibly cool word and it's a pity it fell out of fashion.

[@PuppetEyes]

Well in Danish the word for carrot is “gulerod” which phonetically sounds a whole lot like geoluread

[@pdan4]

Hello, fellow orange appreciator.

[@88marome]

In Swedish we have an old alternative word for orange which is ”brandgul” meaning ”fire yellow”.

[@jmhorange]

Orange aficionado here. According to the chart of people's favorite colors across cultures, it's a tragedy we don't rank higher. There once was a time when there was no specific name for the best color, just a mash up of two inferior colors so we should be proud of how far we've come. Nonetheless, there is still much work we still have to do!

[@esclovisa]

My favourite colour is also orange 😊

[@masterpieceoneday8321]

You know I’m here for Otherwords

[@seanramos9114]

I mostly watch monstrum

[@sannvii]

Yaass!!!!

[@tonymintz8537]

A thing that always stuck out to me about the linguistic color evolution theory was that it seems to closely follow the perception of the three cones of the human eye in ascending order. Red comes first to be described, then the mix of yellow/green (next cone frequency) to distinguish it as the "non-red" color, which splits yet a third time when the third cone (blue) comes into play in the language. This closely follows the pattern of the rods which are most sensitive at 564nm (red), 534nm (green), and finally 420nm (blue). Rods of the eyes, which only detect along the black-white spectrum peak around 498mn, so between the blue and the red/green bunch. It's also worth noting that for each subsequent cone up from red, the less frequent it occurs: 64% for red-sensitivity, ~32% green , ~2% are blue (though cool fast, blue cones peak the furthest away from the red-green bunch and are the most sensitive).

[@miriamrosemary9110]

Interesting!

[@mrs.g.9816]

Very well said. I thought of human evolution, particularly of sight, when I watched this video.

[@XorbityXorbGlowbe]

PBS has evolved so far. I love this.

[@allym2787]

Could you do an episode on what we know about the PIE language itself? I'd be fascinated to learn more about it

[@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana]

It is kind of hard to do that honestly without sounding like a conspiracy theorist. Especially if you delve into the grammar ⛓📜 and early writing systems it had.

[@allym2787]

@@UniDocs_Mahapushpa_Cyavana Ah. That sucks

[@karlkutac1800]

I'd be interested in a PIE episode, too

[@TathD]

Not just what we know but how we know it. Must be fascinating.

[@thealexfiles303]

UniDocs isn't wrong exactly, but there's plenty of good stuff, especially when you get into the "how we know" that TathD would like to see. It does get fascinating. One of my recent favorites is that the lox from a "bagel and lox" is likely the almost unchanged word for salmon.

[@gwyndolinds-en8yt]

In the orange case, it was the same for its color in Arabic, but by another way In Arabic it’s burtaqaly برتقالي from the fruit burtaqal برتقال (the y at the end transforms a noun in an adjective), but this comes from the name Portugal It’s similar to turquoise in English, which comes from the stone, named from Turk/ottoman traders I love this connections

[@bloodofkvasir]

This is very interesting: in Greek they say portolaki πορτοκάλι (fruit and color), in Romanian we say portocaliu (color) and portocala (fruit).

[@gwyndolinds-en8yt]

@@bloodofkvasir in Turkish it’s also portakal. Maybe it’s an influence from Greek?

[@bloodofkvasir]

I have searched and searched (for about 5 min :)) ) but did not cleared the origin of the word: was it from Greeks, Turkish or Valencians...?@@gwyndolinds-en8yt

[@matthuck378]

I think how colors became associated with feelings and moods would be another interesting topic related to this to explore.

[@pdreding]

"Cyan" should be a universally-used English colour word by now thanks to colour printing. And yet somehow it doesn't seem to be there yet.

[@himanbam]

Printing as well as RGB pixels. The secondary colours in RGB are magenta, cyan, and yellow. But a lot of people still says pink/purple, blue, and yellow.

[@howdoipickaname9815]

I know! Saying cyan and blue are the same is like saying red and yellow are the same. Russian and Hebrew distinguish cyan and blue

[@alanr4447a]

The 1967 Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia described "four color printing" by calling the color elements red, yellow, and blue (and black), although they were in fact talking about magenta, yellow and cyan. NB. Black ink isn't really necessary for achieving all colors, but black would be obtained by combining all of the other three, and with often poor alignment of printed elements in the old days, they wanted "black" things, often text, for example, to be sharp, and not blurred, hence the special black ink used.

[@alanr4447a]

Is that a cyanide attitude?

[@sophiaannnn]

Its cuz nobody knows how to pronounce it so theyre scared to say it

[@iqbaalannaafi4944]

Here in Indonesia, the color pink is usually translated into "merah muda". If you translate "merah muda" word-by-word back into English, you'll get either light red or bright red.

[@teguhrinaldiputra6743]

young red 😅

[@Marina.a11]

Same in in Irish. Pink in Irish is “bándearg”, literally white-red

[@JoaoPessoa86]

I studied in italy in the aughts and while learning italian I was only taught "azzuro" to mean blue. Going back just under nine years later I noticed that "blu" had subplanted azzuro for darker blues making azzuro exclussive to light blues

[@stannieholt8766]

Russian also has separate words for light blue and dark blue, in the same way English distinguishes between pink and red. (Most Romance languages simply use some version of “rose” - i.e. naming the hue after the flower like we name reddish-yellow after the orange fruit.)

[@charlessalzman4377]

I watched another video that described it like we would use pink and red. Yeah pink is light red but most English speakers don't categorize pink in that way.

[@alyasuramza]

​@@stannieholt8766is it голубой and синий?

[@hieratics]

Isn't Cyan the most suitable word for light blue?

[@therealmelone1530]

@@hieraticscyan is another word also, “ciano”, but it refers to a more greenish blue. Just Light blue is called “azzurro”

[@thelocalstumbler]

Oh how colorful this latest banger of an episode made my day today!

[@ZipperonDisney]

So violets are blue because there was no word for purple (violet)

[@LindaC616]

In the subject of the proliferation of color names: I have a friend who is blind and crochets afghans. Occasionally, she will be searching for yarns online. And she wants me to help her choose a color for the border that will go with the main color. She lost her sight when she was five, and when she comes across names. Like sea turtle or sea grass or candy cane, she has no idea what to think.

[@dentistrider3874]

I literally just finished "Through the Language Glass" by Guy Deutscher today! He's mostly convinced me that certain elements of language are very plausibly influenced by culture, and it makes a lot of sense to me. The greater the need to specify the colors of different objects, the greater the need of more color words. The study of language on its own is gratifying in itself, but the intersections with Psychology and Anthropology and even Biology is what makes it to me, such an eminently fascinating subject.

[@ahmadsum1]

Fun fact!!! In Bangladesh, we call orange 🍊 "Malta" as supposedly it was being imported from the county Malta! We call mandarin 🍊 "orange"(কমলা, sounds like "Komola") and the same word for the color orange 🧡! I was often confusing my friends at french grocery shops in the beginning. I am still not convienced about the "orange" origin story as there are several conflicting videos out there! "নারঙ্গী" (norange) is a word i only found in old literature! No one would understand you if you say that. Oh btw, in Bengali i think the word for color came first as we used to call orange (mandarin 😅) "কমলা-লেবু" which literary translates to "orange lemon/lime"

[@kokuinomusume]

In Romanian, oranges are called portocale and in Greek πορτοκάλια because they came from Portugese traders.

[@Phobero]

In Neapolitan too!

[@Dragrath1]

Its a bit late but the orange fruit is genetically a cross between the mandarin and the pomelo

[@pawepluta4883]

BTW, bears are in slavic languages named with the word being a slightly evolved, literal "honey eater". The original name of course is forgotten. The other name is something that currently is related to diminuitive of "Michael" name (local language form of course), but I don't know if this was the origin. But this is used rather in children context. I mean, when speaking about a teddy bear, not about Ursus Spealeus.

[@psora1]

We need a Otherwords show for latin branch languages 😮 I love watching this

[@Mackyle-Wotring]

I agree they should. Considering how differently Classical Latin sounds compared to most languages in its family. For example the V in Classical Latin was pronounced as W. Also the C was always pronounced as a K with no exception.

[@tygrkhat4087]

@@Mackyle-Wotring Meaning the title "Caesar" should be pronounced as the German title "Kaiser."

[@Mackyle-Wotring]

@@tygrkhat4087 Yep. Although when pronouncing the name you also pronounce the A as a long A. Interestingly enough other languages have the name "Caesar" pronounced with a k sound. Including Arabic (Qaysar), Hebrew (Qêsār), Latvian (Ķeizars), Punjabi (Kaisara), Chinese (Kǎisǎ), Armenian (Kesar), Persian (Qaysar), Georgian (K’eisari), Ukrainian (Kayzer), Zulu (uKhesari), Ormoro (Qeesaar), Shona (Kesari), Amharic (K’ēsari), Japanese (Kaesaru), Swahili (Kaisari), Greek (Kaísaras), Sanskrit (Kaisara), Urdu (Qaisar), Hindi (Kaisar), Korean (Kaisaleu), Uyghur (Qeyser), Kazakh (Qaysar) (that version of the name also means Courageous), Hawaiian (Kaisara), Tajik (Qajsar), Tatar (Qaysar), Finnish (Keisari), Swedish (Kejsaren), Icelandic (Keisar/Keisarinn), Tibetan (Kha'e sa'e ), Kurdish (Qeyser), Coptic (Kaisar), Telegu (Kaijar), and many others. There is also another thing to mention about the Latin the I would sometimes make the Y sound if it is in front of a vowel. ~Mackyle Wotring

[@hieratics]

You should have mentioned of Cyan and Magenta, because most people consider Cyan a Blue-Green color (like orange used to be yellow-red) or light blue, despite being a color on its own. And Magenta being confused with pink or purple, but also being a color of its own (or actually not a color at all, as it is outside the visible spectrum)

[@larrymorin4841]

Magenta is the name of a perceived color, but does not exist as a wavelength of light. Instead, the color of magenta is created by the visual system receiving simultaneous input of red and blue light.

[@jira6423]

@@larrymorin4841It’s weird. A lot of the time people see magenta and say it’s pink. But they also like to say pink is light red. But it’s not lighter shade of red ‘magenta’ is a completely different perceived hue!

[@hrhqueene]

The fact that we can name a color that doesn’t exist is just incredible

[@catherinebaldwin6580]

As an artist, I love this episode. And thanks for explaining why green to blue have so little names dispirited having vastly more colors then the warms. It is madding to me trying to tell my favorite shades of cool colors.

[@JiveDadson]

Learn Munsell notation. You'll love it.

[@sheren_b]

As a designer i have always found the evolution of naming colors fascinating because we of course interact with colors everyday but having to describe or express the color we perceive can be different for everyone based on their culture or background.

[@archeewaters]

...and schooling! hence unlimited arguments with non art students as to what constitutes a pink shade versus a lilac shade 🙄

[@melissaharris3389]

Psychologically, the way different cultures have divided colors is very interesting. We all see color more or less similarly (unless you're color blind) but have have come up with varying interpretations of what is or isn't certain colors. When a shade should be considered its own separate color and be signified with a separate word or simply get a qualifing adjective.

[@PokhrajRoy.]

I’m so happy Dr. Erica mentioned Artist and designer instead of that done to death joke about girls knowing more colours.

[@anjalitonday05]

Yes 🫰🏼

[@noeraldinkabam]

2:27 So, in fact everything that glitters ís gold…

[@greubermeister2]

y'all never fail to put a smile on my face and interest in my mind, keep up the amazing work!!

[@Beedo_Sookcool]

Great video! Thank you! "Unless you're a designer or an artist you only use about ten or so colour words..." Or, unless you've been getting L.L. Bean and Land's End catalogues for decades. If ya know, ya know. 😉

[@MusicalRaichu]

colours and how we divide them does vary somewhat between cultures. greeks regularly classify orange as a kind of red, and they distinguish galazio (sky blue) from ble (shorter wavelengths of blue: ultramarine, navy blue, indigo). if they need to distinguish, greeks have a word for orange portoka'li, derived from the fruit porto'kali, which comes from "Portugal". japanese has specific words for white, black red, yellow, green, blue and purple. many colours are directly named after things, "peach colour" for pink, "tea colour" for brown, "ash colour" for grey, "orange (fruit) colour" for orange.

[@cl4655]

I've been watching since this channel was just Monstrum and Otherwords has quickly become my favourite show here

[@like90]

The interesting thing about colour and language is that languages that don't have a word for a color such as pink, have a hard time distinguishing pink from other similar colors.

[@charlessalzman4377]

That's actually true of people in general. The more color words a person uses the more nuanced their ability to perceive the variances in different tones. Even if they are technically using the incorrect color word, as long as the person has a examples in mind it trains the brain to pick out the differences. Women, in general, can differentiate colors better than men. Women tend to use more precise color names than men. I didn't know that about languages and people missing whole categories, but it makes sense based on what I read about individuals and limitations based on word usage.

[@safaiaryu12]

I feel like I've heard something similar - some languages (I want to say including Chinese and Japanese) don't treat green and blue as separate colors, so people who speak those languages have a harder time differentiating them.

[@Beryllahawk]

Another observation: babies react FIRST to black and white toys, then to colors, in order of red, green and then blue. (This is also affected by what colors they're surrounded by of course, since stimulation plays a huge part in infant development). I'm seeing a comment in here too about the frequency of cones and rods in the eyes, which I think correlates to the brain's development also? So it makes even more sense that early humans, and their language, took on the oldest, clearest, most vital concepts first. But no matter what names they go by, colors are still wonderful!

[@LindaC616]

It does. Until they are 6 or 7 months old, babies can only see black, white, and red. That is why the coolest baby toys are in those 3 colors, because it's all they can see.

[@danielgadre1000]

The G in geoluhread was pronounced like a Y. Old English G's became Y sounds in front of front vowels (dæg=day). So geoluhread was pronounced very similarly to yellowred. Love the videos btw

[@Psykel]

In my native Swedish, we have an alternative word for orange: brandgul. It means ”fire yellow”, but isn’t really used anymore. I remember old people using it when I was a kid some 30 years ago, but everyone just says ”orange” now (pronounced ”oransh”, like the French).

[@tanhanunna6815]

Bradgul. The balrog's more fearsome cousin.

[@TheRealMycanthrope]

fire yellow sounds awesome

[@Caterfree10]

It’s wild to me that Blue is lower on the color language scale than Green bc I remember when learning Japanese, Blue and Green were often lumped together under Blue (and sometimes even green in traffic lights is called blue). It’s not 100% of the time now bc there is a separate word for green in modern Japanese, but that wasn’t always the case. Very much a guide than a rule!

[@NovaSaber]

I would guess that the fact that the making the distinction came as late as it did in Japanese is probably a part of why the older word went the opposite way compared to most languages.

[@currykingwurst6393]

Funfact: I'm currently reading The Iliad by Homer and when they're talking about the sea it's not described as being blue, it's wine-dark.

[@EnkiduShamesh]

@@currykingwurst6393 If I recall correctly, to classical Greeks, blue was a shade of green, so the sea and the sky were considered to be green

[@shandya]

In my country (Indonesia) we also have an ethnic group that does similar thing too. For them, blue and purple is one word, and green is nonexistent. So for them, the sky is purple and plant leaves are blue.

[@AdelaideBen1]

My Japanese wife will often tell me the lights have turned 'blue' in English, just because its been so in-grained in her language model - even after speaking English outside Japan for nearly 25 years

[@kindredspirits2002]

Hearing that pronunciation of “gealoread” broke my Old English heart.

[@stevetheduck1425]

Gyellored. I'm going to use it along with 'murrey' for a sort of purplish-brown found in heraldry.

[@KitKatWiffleBallBat]

This was amazing! Always down for a short, fun video from you guys! This one speaks to me simply because I like to "art" in my free time.

[@JohnAranita]

My favorite Crayola crayon color in the '70s was Burnt Sienna.

[@curiousKuro16]

The fact that "Green grass grows" come from the same words is blowing my mind right now.

[@braiangrill7357]

You finally bring back "ACTUALLY" ❤ Love it

[@silverdragon2024]

It's interesting that "blue" is such a late addition to languages as a whole. When I was learning Japanese, I was taught they didn't have a word for green (midori) until fairly recently. Green and blue were lumped together under blue (ao). Apparently, because of this, Japanese people have a harder time distinguishing between green and blue than other cultures. I actually saw an example of this when I did my study abroad in Japan. I was at a crosswalk and overheard a mom asking their child, who looked to be about 3 years old, what color the stoplight was. The child enthusiastically shouted "Aoiro!" (blue color), and the mom said that's right.

[@compaqtube]

She's so good. I love how expressive she is. It's fun to watch! Good job!

[@artesiningart4961]

As a Filipino growing up in a city in the southwestern part or area of the Philippines, I rarely heard other Filipinos older than me, even my fellow elementary students or pupils way back when I was still in elementary school, use the word "purple" for any color with a mix of red and blue or any color in between red and blue. I remember that we would just and almost always call or refer to it as "violet", and sometimes if it's more bluish, bluer, or leaning towards blue, then it's "indigo" or even just "blue", and while growing up from elementary school to high school in the mid- to late 2000s to the early to mid-2010s, I remember that I personally can't differentiate a "violet" from a "purple and vice versa, so I just thought they're just the same color and that the latter color is just the fancier name or version of the former color. Later on, I remember that I just thought that "violet" is more bluish or is bluer than "purple" and that "purple" is more reddish or is redder than "violet" but not as more reddish or redder as "maroon" and a "red-violet", and I also remember that I just treated "purple" the same as a bluer "red-violet" or a bluer "maroon", or as a darker, more intense, or more vivid "lavender". Now, "purple" for me is the color "violet" but with a little more red and with a brighter, more intense, or more vivid color.

[@calliss510]

Interesting point. I'm in the same gen, 2000s to 2010s elementary to highschool. We didn't differentiate purple from violet either, just called it violet or ube up north.

[@philyra2]

This was fascinating! I love learning about word origins and this colorful expo was super interesting.

[@CausticLemons7]

Such a wild and diverse history for things that today we consider so simple. I really love this channel!

[@tomhalla426]

As a painting contractor, I can swear people have very little sense of absolute color. What something looks like next to something else matters, as the color balance of the light will vastly affect what it immediately looks like. People picking anything yellow off a paint chip are almost always surprised what it looks like in mass on a wall.

[@charlessalzman4377]

I just commented about this on another comment. The more color words a person uses the more their brains can make out slight variances. The article I read mentioned that women, in general, are better than men and noticing these difference. The thought behind that is women tend to use more color words when thinking about them on a cosmetic level. Have you noticed anything similar in your profession? It would be interesting to hear about real world experiences.

[@dinofearme1]

By using "pink" as a broad category, the shared characteristics of colors, which often involve varying proportions of red and blue. If we want to simplify discussions about colors that fall within that range of hues. Would you agree that fuchsia, magenta, violet, purple, periwinkle, and even red as different shades under the general umbrella of pink?

[@matthuck378]

I'm sure I've said this a bunch of times, but I love the retro opening animation. Takes me back to watching PBS on broadcast TV as a kid.

[@bethanysmith5856]

Fun thing : cochineal hides under and produces the white fuzzy stuff you'll sometimes see on cactus

[@SusanGeyer-l4k]

...and the cactus dies.

[@luisespineira9882]

As of kid, I had been fascinated of the names of the colors in a large Crayola box

[@alyasuramza]

In Indonesian we usually call the colour pink as "merah muda" (literally means young red) or "merah jambu". The latter refers to the fruit jambu (Syzygium aqueum or I suppose watery rose apple?), which I think is the exact same thing like how we named the colour orange 😃

[@yesthatsam]

Could you please add the sources about colors and languages ? As far as I know “red” is indeed third in the “color language scale” but finding blue on the sixth position come as a real surprise. Would you mind to share where you got that information from ?

[@bentoboxtsu]

I love this series! I learn so much!

[@AkiVainio]

Now I'm interested in how words of color evolved in my native Finnish. Only orange seems to have any kind of link to English (but is probably loaned from Swedish or German). Also, the bear name is interessting. Do have a similar history for it. Our relationship with them seems to have been quite different. I even have a brick of a tome about old poems about bears, which probably only exists because they had such a strong religious importance to us.

[@brettknoss486]

Dutch? The Dutch are ruled by the House of Orange, and Orange is strongly associated with Protestantism.

[@kirilvelinov7774]

Crayola in 1999 introduced internet themed crayons:Green Dot Com,Megahertz Maroon,Floppy Yellow,Www Purple,Web Surfin Blue,Infra Red,Ultra Violet,Circuit Board Green,Transistor Yellow,Online Orange,Cyberspace Orange,Megabyte Blue,Point And Click Green and Plug And Play Pink

[@FlyToTheRain]

I love learning all of this!! Keep it coming!

[@jameskelley2186]

The "G" in Anglo-Saxon is pronounced as essentially a "Y" sound, so the Geoluhread comes out even closer to "yellow-red" phonetically. The "J" sound for "G" comes from French and is heard more in Middle-English than in Anglo-Saxon which has harder consonants, much like Latin.

[@Liska78]

I came to the comments to see if anyone else already pointed this out before I wrote a comment saying the same thing haha

[@Goodman7815-c4k]

I find incredible how something so simple can be so intresting.

[@michaelturner2806]

I know purple was a much later addition, but from "the seven colors" its place is taken up by both indigo and violet, which I never really leaned to differentiate, as purple seemed more logical as a sixth color to me. I'm surprised you didn't mention indigo and violet, especially where the notions came from and where they disappeared off to.

[@JavSusLar]

2:54 Extreme example of ad-hoc explanation: we have no idea, but we can tweak the data so that it accommodates to any hypothesis we may develop and seem like we know something.

[@Chetna444]

Funny how narang word comes from the Sanskrit but the westernisation and colonisation has impacted the Indian subcontinent in a way people have forgotten their roots

[@raggitla]

Fascinating episode! Several little pieces of random knowledge struck my just like lightning - once, I did not know about bear meaning "brown". In German, it is Bär, so the nickname as "the brown one" was propably much older than Old English, na? Bear in Russian, by the way, is медведь (medved), which means "the one who knows (where the) honey (is)" - even more fascinating for me as a Sanskritist, for in Sanskrit that would be madhuvid. The second thing that blew my mind was that nickname comes from "an ekename" - in my Frisian mother tongue, people used to use nicknames for each other, which were called Ökelnaam.

[@raggitla]

The funnier to think that brown bear or Braunbär is thus just another word like "chai tea" or "Tentil daal"

[@JHaras]

Yeah, I think she just avoided to mention German. The Swedish word is the maybe-known "Björn". Some "Ursus" word for bear in Nordic languages is nowhere to be found =(

[@badsketch9264]

Every day I see more videos on something radiolab brilliantly covered.

[@andreketaren]

Like orange the color and orange the fruit, in Indonesia we have the word "coklat" for brown and chocolate

[@mysterytruck]

every time, i learn interesting information about words. thank you for expanding my knowledge and helping me learn more wonderful words.

[@artyfarty87]

As an artist, This is one of my favourite episodes.

[@opoaotoroiocoko]

The phased glasses was mint 👌🤌🤌

[@TDrake-iq6cp]

Bait and switch -- I spent the whole video waiting to learn about how we know that ancient humans didn't have color words...

[@WooMaster777]

I love these videos!! Thank you! 😊❤

[@theshadow2803]

I think it's fascinating, how different languages change the spelling/pronunciation of the colour orange and the fruit. In german those 2 words are spelled the same but pronounced differently. In italian the word for said colour is arancione and the fruit is arancia.

[@LoganMPierce]

This video was so awesome. Thank you.

[@mencken8]

There may be no limit to the list of subjects for Ph.D. dissertations.

[@Pou1gie1]

@2:52 Hunter Green (dark green), Chartreuse (between yellow and green), Jade green (jewel tone deep green)

[@zyxw2000]

Emerald, kelly, moss, celadon, seafoam, mint, juniper, forest, pine,...

[@LifeEleanorDeathNell]

I heard an anecdote once (not sure if it was true or not) where some folks tried to be very careful not to describe the colour of the sky to their daughter, or have it described to her as blue or anything. Not sure how they managed that in this day and age. At any rate, the anecdote I heard was that at age five when they asked the daughter what colour the sky was, she looked at them, confused, and said it had no (inherent) colour, that it was colourless. I think about that a lot, because while yes sometimes the sky seems very colourful, like a bright clear day or at sunrise or sunset, most of the time at least where I live it does seem colourless - and more or less it kinda is, though getting into the philosophy of colour is beyond a KZbin comment I think. I just find that anecdote fascinating and kinda wish we were taught that the sky was inherently colourless. I dunno, it just feels right to me. As someone who doesn't have a favourite colour, but does have very strong opinions about different shades and hues of colours, I'm very glad for the hundreds+ of words to describe what I actually mean 😊

[@ponyote]

Yay for a new episode.

[@BallotBoxer]

*Boy:* "The colors, Duke, the colors!" *Dog:* "I'm colorblind, kid!"

[@Jayjay-qe6um]

Pink is thought to have a calming effect. One shade known as "drunk-tank pink" is sometimes used in prisons to calm inmates. While pink's calming effect has been demonstrated, researchers of color psychology have found that this effect only occurs during the initial exposure to the color.

[@kerutlj]

This was a great video, thank you!

[@markhollingsworth3262]

Fascinating. I love ❤ this program!

[@grf15]

How I love listening to Dr B!

[@sopernovashrez]

The 'Bher-' sound for Brown is still prevalent in Sanskrit derived language such as Hindi. For instance, Brown in Hindi is called 'Bhura'. In Hindi, a bear is know as 'Bhaalu'. As per Hindu mythology, a minor God known as as 'Bhairu' , happens to resemble a bear, similar to Bero mentioned at 5:12.

[@garrettschmidt-mccormack7012]

I thought the bear taboo was older than old English, since other Germanic languages use the "brown" reference. And other Indo-European languages use different euphemisms.

[@GregoryTheGr8ster]

Also, in our digital age, every color can be described by 3 values: red intensity, green intensity, and blue intensity. These intensity values are usually in hexadecimal, which represent values in the range of 0 to 1 (or 0% to 100%).

[@annaeliasson952]

In Sweden, in the early seventies, when I was in kindergarten, the common word for the colour "orange" was "brand-gul". Literal translation: fire yellow. "Orange" (the colour) was used too, but I had a book about colours where orange (the fruit) was described as "brandgul". I just asked my daughter, born 2004. She had to think long and hard to recall hearing "brandgul" back when she was in kindergarten. Fun fact: orange the fruit is called "apelsin". We said "apelsin-gul" too, rather than "orange".

[@jmhorange]

Very cool video. I remember hearing that I think it's Russian that has two words for light and and dark blue in their basic color set so Russian kids were better able tell the difference between varying shades of blue than children who only had one word for blue in their language. Also I question the validity of the chart that shows people's favorite color. The best color is obviously orange. The sooner we acknowledge this fact, the better off we'll be :P

[@עומרשרייבר-ל4ר]

The fact that the original name of bears was so terrfying that it was lost to history is honestly kinda metal.

[@sione_etc]

It's so fascinating that the development of colour words kinda mirrors their order by light wavelength! Also 5:10 the ancient word for bear was actually lost quite a while before Old English - 'bear' goes back as far as Proto-Germanic *bero, also the origin of Swedish 'björn', German 'Bär' and so on. The original lost PIE word was *h₂r̥tḱo- (which survived in other IE branches - Latin 'ursus', Greek 'arktos' etc.). Had that word persisted in Germanic, the modern English word for bear could theoretically have been something like 'rax', 'rought', 'arrow', or 'arx' depending on the nuances of the sound changes (I worked that out once cause I'm a nerd)

[@alfonsmelenhorst9672]

In Sanskrit bear is ṛkṣas (ऋक्षस्). There is another newer word in Sanskrit: Bhalluka (भल्लुक). The modern Hindi bhālū (भालू) is derived from bhalluka.

[@dalekman8945]

10 / 10 best show on youtube.

[@himanbam]

It's a good thing no one remembers the real name for bears. If we ever figure it out, it's gonna be all over. The bears will come for us.

[@сесилияалександрова]

The words for pink are close in many languages [but not Eng], and close to the word red, and pink derives from the word for the rose flower. In Bulgarian pink is rozovo [розово]. In Polish it sounds like rozovi. In Russian its rozoviy. In Ukranian its rozheviy. In Czech and Belarusian sounds like ruzhovi. In Serbian its roze. In Croatian it sounds like ruzhichasta. In Slovak it sounds like ruzhova. In Slovene its roze, so almost the same in all Slavic languages. I think in German and Spanish it's rosa. Pink is worth a whole seperate video! Also its cool that you mentioned the bear and how it lost its true name due to the taboo! The new name for the bear in Russian derived from the expression ,,honey-eater''.

[@afirewasinmyhead]

In French and Portuguese, too, the word for pink comes from the rose. 😊 I would love a video all about pink. 💖

[@сесилияалександрова]

@@afirewasinmyhead My favorite color is purple, but I don't know what to say about it 😀

[@sallomon2357]

Doesn't German have two pinks, one "rosa" and the other... "pink" ?

[@сесилияалександрова]

@@sallomon2357 I don't really speak German. Maybe they're the same thing, but pink has turned into a permanent denizen in the language. Eng is conquering the world.

[@sallomon2357]

@@сесилияалександрова I just remember it this way from learning German in secondary school, maybe it changed a bit from that time 🤷‍♀️

[@mikeyr290]

This is very informative! Thanks!

[@mstegosaurus]

This was fascinating and I enjoyed it immensely, but one color that seems (to me) notably absent, leaving my curiosity not fully-sated: grey.

[@lylecampbell8288]

Pink is very recent I think. Previously thought of as light red it is now thought of mostly as a colour of its own. Even though its still just light red. Perhaps the fault of lipstick makers?

[@fmac6441]

Funny enough, in Portuguese, at least in Brazil, the color orange is called "laranja" (orange) or "abóbora" (pumpkin). Ps: It is also commonly used as "cor de laranja/abóbora" (color of Orange/pumpkin)

[@ldbarthel]

Thank you! Some presenters have tried to interpret the developmental hierarchy of color words to mean that speakers of those languages couldn't "see" those colors. (No word for "blue" yet? Guess they couldn't see the color of the sky... ARGH!) As you so rightly point out, it's whether or not there is a need to express that color difference on a regular basis in language. There's also the very fundamental issue of individual sensory interpretation. The color I "see" may not be the Pantone equivalent of the color you "see", but it doesn't matter because we've learned to identify that hue socially by a specific color word.

[@medusa_slayer]

I love these. They are like small fun facts ! 😍😊

[@julianwohlers7250]

4:56 The middle ages? Dont the germanic languages basically all share the same root for "bear"? As in "Bär" (German), "Björn" (Swedish). So did they develop it independenly? It would seem the simpler explaination that they developed it together some time during Proto-germanic times. But I did not do any research, I might be wrong.

[@blackkittycat15]

It's kinda crazy to think about a time where color wasn't important enough to have words seeing how now it's one of the first things you learn as an infant. Even learning a new language colors are among the first taught.

[@devynbastos5945]

4:05 Oh my gosh!!! The portuguese word for orange is laranja, I had no idea that's where it came from. I'm surprised you didn’t mention it.