Re: Futurese: Colours

Javier BF wrote:
> >Yellow is also more significant than other colors because our eyes are
>more
> >sensitive to wavelengths of light in that general range.
>
>The experiments to determine which wavelengths our
>eyes are more sensitive to, with speakers of which
>languages were made? And which colours were more
>present in their daily life or were important for
>their culture? I have doubts that such experiments
>have ever been made outside Western countries or
>countries where Western culture has had considerable
>influence. Had any such experiment ever been made
>with Amazonian Indians, Australian Aborigines or
>Eskimos, the results would most probably differ
>from those you may get from Westerners.
>
>It's the same as if they take a bunch of English
>speakers and made with them an experiment to see
>which phonetic our ears are more sensitive to.
>Obviously, the ears of an English speaker have been
>"tuned" to be more sensitive to certain sound features
>than others: those that are relevant for English
>phonology, while became "deaf" to those that aren't.
>But if you then take a bunch of Japanese the results
>of your experiment will be completely different.
>Similarly, our eyes have been "tuned" to be more
>sensitive to the colour differences and categorizations
>that are relevant for our language, while became
>"blind" to those that aren't.
I think you've misunderstood this. Unless I've been totally misinformed by a
number of sources, it's our brains, not our ears, that become sensitized to
phonetic differences relevant to our native language, and desnsitized to
other ones.

I also very much doubt that language and culture influences the sensitivity
of our retinas in any significant ways. What it may to to the
vision-processing parts of our brains, I won't speculate about.

                                                Andreas

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