A note on color terminology

[Page Stephens]

I just thought about this after I received a note on another list which I could not read because of the colors of the upload.

I am color blind and have known this for many years. As a result all too many words which some people use in order to denote subtle differences between one color and another are totally meaningless to me.

This is a biological problem which I and many others especially white males share but it also impinges on our use of words since when someone uses a word like mauve we don't know what the hell they are talking about even if we might use them.

Those of us who are color blind think that we live in the same world that everyone else lives in or at least we do until we take a color blindness test but then we learn that we are not able to distinguish between the shades of colors which others see.

As a result you have to take our use of color terms with a grain or pile of salt.

I invite everyone on this list to take the test on this url: http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.html
in order to discover whether or not they are color blind.

I took it myself this morning only to flunk it entirely but my wife took it and discovered that she could see colors which I could not see.

I would love to have everyone on this list take the test for their own information.

If anyone out there then wants to discuss the results of their test results in terms of their use of color terminology I would love to see the conclusions about linguistic usage they draw from this experience.

Page Stephens