There Are Thousands Of Different Colors - Why Do Most Of Us Have So Few Words For Them (And Some Languages Fewer Than Others)?

"In an industrialized culture, most people get by with 11 color words: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple and gray. That's what we have in American English. Maybe if you're an artist or an interior designer, you know specific meanings for as many as 50 or 100 different words for colors - like turquoise, amber, indigo or taupe. But this is still a tiny fraction of the colors that we can distinguish. ... [And] nonindustrialized cultures typically have far fewer words for colors than industrialized cultures." (One language has words only for white, black, and red.) Two cognitive scientists look into why this is.

Article source here:Arts Journal