How Does All The Colours, Including Grue: How Languages See Colours Differently Work?

You can see colors differently depending on what words you have for them, just like how you might describe a grue as green in the day and blue at night if you didn’t know it was both.

Imagine you have a basket of fruits. To someone who only knows the word “apple,” all red, round fruits are apples, even if one is shiny and another is wrinkled. But to someone who has words for red, shiny, and wrinkly, they might say, “This is a glossy apple” or “That’s a bumpy apple.”

Now think about colors. Some languages have only a few color names, like maybe just black, white, and red, while others have many more, like blue, green, yellow, and purple.

If you grow up speaking a language with only a few color words, you might not notice the differences between shades as much. It’s like wearing sunglasses that make everything look gray, you don’t see all the colors clearly at first.

But if you learn more color names, it's like getting clearer glasses, suddenly, you can tell blue from green, and maybe even spot a grue, something that seems green in one light and blue in another! You can see colors differently depending on what words you have for them, just like how you might describe a grue as green in the day and blue at night if you didn’t know it was both.

Imagine you have a basket of fruits. To someone who only knows the word “apple,” all red, round fruits are apples, even if one is shiny and another is wrinkled. But to someone who has words for red, shiny, and wrinkly, they might say, “This is a glossy apple” or “That’s a bumpy apple.”

Now think about colors. Some languages have only a few color names, like maybe just black, white, and red, while others have many more, like blue, green, yellow, and purple.