Humanities Homework Help

This podcast was mentioned several times in the previous assignment. Now is your chance to listen to it in it’s entirety!

If the embedded player below does not work, you can find the podcast here (Links to an external site.).

Familiarize yourself with the following three questions. Then, focus on the question corresponding to the student discussion group to which you have been assigned, and formulate your response.

Your initial response should identify important points, approximately 2 to 3 paragraphs. The discussion questions are broad and you are not expected to answer the entire question, you are however, expected to provide a thorough response to a portion of the question and to bring up new points of information. Please do not repeat information that has already been posted.

Submit response(s) to your group’s question, review student responses, and respond to fellow students’ responses by accessing the discussion board: to do this look at the menu on the left, choose Discussions.

After you have posted your initial response to the assigned group question on the Discussions page, comment twice on what your fellow classmates in your own group have posted. Then comment once each for the other two groups you are not in (five posts total). Remember to submit a comment that is insightful and contributes to the conversation that is taking place amongst your group. You will not receive credit for comments such as “I really like what you wrote” or “I totally agree with what you wrote”, and leave it at that. You must expand on your thoughts. Please remember that you are required to post a minimum of five times for this lesson.

Part 1

Discussion question: What are you thoughts on how naming of colours evolve in languages all over the world? Check out the video below.

Part 2

comment on the replys:

1- Honestly, before this video I never really thought about how different countries recognize colors. For some reason I thought it was a pretty universal thing. Thinking about it now it makes sense that not everybody perceives color the same way. In the video it mentions that the language Wobè only has three names for basic color categories which is dark, light, and Red. Whereas in the English language we have 11 and Russia has 12. It’s pretty crazy to me that some cultures only have 3 color categories. It just doesn’t make sense to me how that works in everyday life. I think about how much I use color to describe things and if I was only able to go off of light, dark, and red, it would make things so much harder! I understand that color is a spectrum so technically there is no reason why red is in our color category and a yellow-green color is not. But it just seems like naturally you’d need to distinguish more than just three colors.

The video mentions that as languages develop they typically all create color categories in a specific order. Usually, it’s black and white first, then red, green and yellow, blue and then others like brown, purple, pink, etc. Researches have suggested that the number of color terms in a population is related to their general intellect and cultural development. I find that so interesting. I would think that just by being able to recognize how many different colors and shades are around you that naturally you would create more color categories. Like recognizing that the ocean is a different color than the sand. Or that a leaf is a different color than the branch. It just seems like you’d create more names for things like that because light and dark is not enough to describe that. It’s such an interesting concept and I’d love to hear how different cultures talk about what colors things are. I feel like color and the distinguishing of different colors is very present and important in our culture. I wonder if it’s just not as important or talked about in others?

Overall, that was a cool video and super interesting to see how other cultures perceive color. This class already has made me think about things that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I didn’t think I would enjoy learning about color as much as I do. I’m glad as a graphic designer I get to work with color everyday.

2- I have actually watched this YouTube video before and still find it fascinating. The process of understanding how many cultures developed color in terms of light/white and dark/black with the first true color being red is amazing! When you’re young, some of the first descriptive things you learn are words and colors. You never think of where or how those colors came about or the history of a specific color. Especially the famous “why is the sky blue?” I find the experiment that Guy Deutscher did with his child and the color blue was very cool (podcast). It reminded me of my own culture.

I am Native American, Navajo and we don’t specifically have a word for the color Blue in our language. We use the word for green and the word for sky to describe the color blue. Watching the YouTube video also confirmed how blue is very rare in the natural world and it is more of a industrial color. I wonder how other cultures have had to adapt to naming the color blue in today’s modern world . Interesting how blue is the world’s most favorite color. (Mine is purple, but not to wear) lol

3- I don’t think that gender has anything to do with color perception. I believe that it comes from the individual and perception cannot be generalized into groups. Everyone has their own experience with color that’s going to shape the way they think and feel about it. Even with color blindness occurring more in men I don’t think this would have an effect on perception within the gender because it only occurs in 8% of men. I do think that it would change how colorblind people experience the world. The industrialized world is made of colors designed for non-colorblind people, so colorblindness takes out some of the details put into our world.

I do think that when you work with and pay attention to colors closely you can gain more detail and shades into the color. A great example is from Radiolab when they had the painter look at colors only a tetrachromat could see. This could only be from a developed skill of color analysis. So, for people who’s lives are involved with working with colors they would perceive a slightly different world than everyone else.

4- I believe the idea of color and music having a connection to each other is something I think about more than I realize. I am a dance major, so music is something that is very important to me and every time I listen to music I imagine movement that goes along with it. When I think of movement while listening to music I also imagine colors and an overall feeling. When listening to music it has an effect over our feelings, and different feelings bring up different colors. I think of all of these things consecutively when listening to music, and I am unknowingly doing this most of the time, it’s just an instinct. I believe the album cover of a song, and mentioning of a color in a song, and if the title of the song has a color in it, have power over the colors I imagine while listening to music.

For example the song “Baby Blue”, by Rence has an album color that incorporates the color light pink as the main color, so when listening to that song, I think of pastel colors like baby blue and light pink. It’s also interesting that I feel like I imagine a lot of songs in black and white, maybe it’s because there is piano in them or it’s an older song, I don’t really know but I found that interesting. This idea is very interesting to me because it’s so personal, I don’t think every person that listens to a song thinks of the same color, or thinks of color at all. I do believe color and music are connected in more ways than one, but it’s all subjective.