Color Blindness and Color Terms

[Terra]

I'm sure that this has been asked before, but I'll go ahead anyways. So, are there any populations on the Earth where colorblindness is near universal, and thus it affected their terms for colors, such as merging that of red and green?

[Soap]

Not near-universal, no. The highest incidence of colorblindness is on Pingelap Island in Micronesia, which, as its name suggests, is a small island, and even there it's only about 5-10%. However it happens that it's "total" color blindness and not just red-green or some other pair, which is more common in the world at large.


http://www.oliversacks.com/books/island ... olorblind/

The description says "total color-blindness is the norm", but they're lying so they can sell more books. The author probably didn't write that summary.

[Guitarplayer II]

It's red-green (defect in red or green cones) > blue-yellow (defect in blue cones) > total AFAIK

Also note that colourblindness may range from a small affection to a total defect. And note that not only the name-giving colours are affected, but other combinations as well. E.g. I (being red-weak) sometimes have difficulties distinguishing blue from violet and violet from purple and green from yellow as well. Red highlighting in black text is a no-go as well, as well as red chalk on a blackboard.

Edit: http://www.colblindor.com/2009/01/19/co ... confusion/ contains a chart demonstrating which colours people typically have problems with due to the different kinds of colourblindness.

EDIT: corrected colour-mixup

[Civil War Bugle]

I am red-green cb and in my own experience that red and green do not merge totally, but that I frequently will believe that one is the other. The most typical colour when this does not happen is brown.

[Curlyjimsam]

I am red-green colourblind, but I virtually never have any problems saying what is red and what is green. The biggest problems I have are between various shades of brown, and between blue and purple - I tend automatically to think of lighter colours as "blue" and darker ones as "purple", though on closer inspection I can often make out the difference. But it always strikes me as interesting that many languages simply don't distinguish blue and purple anyway, and I sometimes wonder if this is as much a quirk of my personal lexicon as a sensory thing.

[Civil War Bugle]

I am red-green colourblind, but I virtually never have any problems saying what is red and what is green. The biggest problems I have are between various shades of brown, and between blue and purple - I tend automatically to think of lighter colours as "blue" and darker ones as "purple", though on closer inspection I can often make out the difference. But it always strikes me as interesting that many languages simply don't distinguish blue and purple anyway, and I sometimes wonder if this is as much a quirk of my personal lexicon as a sensory thing.

I simply act as though purple doesn't exist. It's a pointless colour. In second grade art class I asked the kid next to me whether something was blue or purple, saying I was a little colour blind, and a minute later I overheard him saying to someone else, 'that's not a little colour blind, that's really colour blind.'

[Astraios]

I simply act as though purple doesn't exist. It's a pointless colour. In second grade art class I asked the kid next to me whether something was blue or purple, saying I was a little colour blind, and a minute later I overheard him saying to someone else, 'that's not a little colour blind, that's really colour blind.'

Purple is awesome!

[Viktor77]

In dogspeak aka Barkian, the words for red and green are the same. So, for example, the word for red is barkbarkbark, and the word for green is also barkbarkbark. Compare this to blue, which is barkbarkarbark. And yellow which is barkbarkbar.