Yes, the word for greenery/foliage, 青葉, translates to “blue leaves”
Also the green traffic light is called blue
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BunScientist@lemmy.zip 14 hours ago
From what I know, it has to do with the word red covering the purple part of the spectrum long ago, and the “need” for the word purple came out later but purple things that were named red didn’t get renamed.
You can look at japanese right now and 青い covers both blue and green, with a relatively recent addition of 緑 to cover only green (thus possibly pushing 青い in the future to be only blue, who knows)
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 11 hours ago
JamieDub86@piefed.social 7 hours ago
Well whys it called Shepherds Pie when it doesnt contain shepherds, or Cottage Pie when its nothing to do with cottages or cottagimg? How about that one…checkmate!!!
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 8 minutes ago
And baby powder is never powdered babies!
Apytele@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
I already knew this about colors (it’s also why “redheads” have orange hair) but I recently dug more into how the musical spectrum and how tones are defined is very similar in it’s cultural variance. Another thing is how the cardinal directions are divided radially and how time is counted. Shit counting bases even, most of the imperial measurements are based on either base 12 or base 16 math.
Wild to think that something you grew up with as a fundamental fact of the world might actually be super culturally subjective.
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
For bonus points, terms for colors are developed differently but similarly in different languages: see e.g. ‘Color term’.
VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Similarly, the red fox is clearly orange, but English speakers were exposed to that species of fox before developing a word for that specific color. For bonus linguistical oddities, ‘orange’ was used for the fruit before it was used for the color.
JamieDub86@piefed.social 7 hours ago
Or the red squirrel, which is brown.
TisI@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
And red hair.