Telugu used to not distinguish green and yellow

And Japanese traffic lights

Posted on 2022 August 25

Today I found out that traffic lights in Japan have red, yellow, and blue, because Japan used a single word for grue (both blue and green).1

I had known blue-green nondistinction exists, but didn't know a language as big as Japanese had it. I ended up Googling it, and found out that in fact, a language I had known for quite a long time has an even stranger distinction: Telugu uses the same word పచ్చ [pat͡ʃt͡ʃa] (paccha) for green and yellow, and modern Telugu uses ఆకుపచ్చ (literally leaf-paccha) for green and పసుపుపచ్చ (literally turmeric-paccha) for yellow. I had known these words for over fifteen years at this point, but didn't realize this; I supposed పచ్చ was just a strange word for "color" that was only used for yellow and green.2

The more you know.

  1. Actually, it only had words for red, blue, white, and black; the modern word for green (みどり, midori) originates from "sprout". ↩

  2. This isn't entirely unfounded: బూడిదరంగు [buːɖidaraŋu] is "grey", but is literally బూడిద + రంగు "grey-color". ↩