1205: Practice with Seeing (Color Week: 6) Mar 28, 2018

Concerning whether or not people can see colors they have no word for, one common and fairly logical idea is that it comes down to training. While certain people like W.H.R. Rivers had ideas that related to evolutionary biology, and thought that cultures with fewer colors were less physically advanced, a less racist response could simply come down to training; people taught to look out for more different colors could just train them selves to see more than otherwise, even if everyone is physiologically the same. This is the same explanation for how people who speak Guugu Yimithirr have an innate sense of cardinal directions. There are some flaws to this idea however. Firstly, it is possibly to see something and not have a single word to describe it, either using approximations or adjectives (such as 'light'), and also plenty of people (including English speakers) use nouns in lieu of colors all the time, such 'rose', 'violet' or 'orange'.  If we include these ones, pretty much everyone will be on the same footing and the Sapirian- or Whorfian-type notions that language determine the way one is able to think are harder—though by no means impossible—to argue.
Make sure to check out the newest Word Facts Video: https://youtu.be/Ay9PNWwcQwo
Support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts