What do you wonder about?
Pose your queries and answer
questions from others. Contact
us at [email protected]
This edition we ask:
WHAT COLOUR IS IT? DID LANGUAGES INVENT
WORDS FOR COLOURS IN THE SAME ORDER?
In the late 1960s researchers posited that there was a pattern to the
development of names for colours in diff erent languages around the world.
The debate still rages as to whether nature or nurture is responsible for these
results. Our featured video by Vox examines some of the theories behind
this; further information can be found at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_
relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate and in the paper: “On the origin
of the hierarchy of color names” www.pnas.org/content/109/18/6819.full
Embed video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg
Did you know that in Japan some traffi c
lights are red, amber and blue instead of green
because of the ancient use of the term ao which
covers both blue and green? Find out more
at: www.rd.com/culture/heres-japan-blue-
traffi c-lights?trkid=soc-rd-mentalfloss
… and finally, something to ponder:
In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, Octarine is
the colour of magic – an eighth colour of the
rainbow. What other (non-fictional) colours have
we never seen and what do you think they and
Octarine would look like in the visual spectrum?
OTHER QUESTIONS TO DEBATE:
“The Veneer of Civilisation is
very thin” – do you agree or
disagree with Veneer Theory?
Is creativity a bottomless pit?
GET
WONDERING
AND LET US
KNOW YOUR
THOUGHTS!
Hypothetically, how diff erent
would the world be without
hypothesis?
IGNIS
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