gems, color science, color and language, color and culture

Color words are more than a clever way to sell crayons. A study by British researchers suggests that color words in a given language shape human perception of color, perhaps explaining why some native English-speaking children, familiar with the rainbow of colors in the Crayola 64-pack, actually can tell rust" from "brick" and "moss" from "sage," while children who grow up speaking languages with fewer color names lump such hues together. The research on English children and children in seminomadic Namibian tribes appeared in the December issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (Vol. 133, No. 4). Cognitive psychologist Akira Miyake, PhD, of the University of Toronto, says that the study "addresses an age-old question: To what extent does language shape or even determine the way we think?""