1202: Russian Blues (Color Week: 3) Mar 25, 2018

Russians blues are quite famous among cat-lovers and (some) linguists, but for a very different reason. Russian has two basic color categories for what would both in English only be 'blue', which fascinates (some) linguists. The word 'siniy' (синий) roughly translates to the English for 'blue', but the word 'goluboy' (голубой) translates to 'light blue'. Of course, this is expressible in English, and also there will be some variation from speaker-to-speaker about what is considered which in the same way as there may be variation about how to consider any transitional color like vermillion, but some research, such as that of Jonathan Winawer, has suggested that Russian speakers are marginally faster at detecting distinctions of blues compared to English speakers. The reaction-times for seeing blues of both Russians and English-speakers evened out, however, when they were given more tasks. The experiment had a small sample-size and only looked at bilingual Russian speakers too, which was the exact reason that people criticized the perhaps-revolutionary research of Berlin and Kay, which popularized the study of colors as they relate to language, though the study has existed for some time. Winawer's research is quite popular among a general audience generally but many linguists and anthropologists are skeptical.
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