Reader\'s Digest Australia & New Zealand - June 2018

106 | June• 2018

WHO KNEW?

I

t’salessonmostofuslearnyears

before we’re old enough to see over

thedashboard:redmeans‘stop’,

greenmeans‘go’.Simpleenough.

Butwhathappenswhenyoulivein

aculturewherethewordforgreen

also means blue?

hat’s when you see things like this.

Drive around Japan long enough and

you’ll probably run into one of the

country’s mythical blue traic lights.

Elsewhere around the country you’ll

find ‘go’ signals that are decidedly

teal, turquoise and aqua. “Is this sig-

nal broken?” you might wonder. “Did

some overworked lightmonger install

the wrong bulbs?” The answer, as

Atlas Obscurapoints out, is not in the

wiring: it’s in the Japanese language.

Japan’s

Blue Traffic

Lights

BY BRANDON SPECKTOR

This is what happens when you

have one word for two colours

Hundreds of years ago, the Japa-

nese language included words for

onlyfourbasiccolours:black,white,

red and blue. If you wanted to de-

scribesomethinggreen,you’dusethe

wordforblue–ao–andthatsystem

worked well enough until roughly

the end of the irst millennium, when

the wordmidori(or i g i n a l l y me a n i n g

‘sprout’)beganshowingupinwriting

to describe what we know as green.

Even then,midoriwas considered

ashadeofao.Asyoucanimagine,

this sudden switch-over had lasting

efects in Japan.

Today you’ll still see green things

dubiouslylabelledblue.Afruitven-

dormightsellyouanao-ringo(‘blue

apple’) only to disappoint you that