- Russian – Visual Color Distinctions
Language can affect the way we visually see the world, down to the precise shades of a color. In Russian, there is not just one word for the color ‘blue’ – the Russian language has two words, “голубо́й” (goluboy) meaning light blue, and “си́ний” (siniy) meaning dark blue. Because of this simple distinction for two shades of blue, in a language experiment, Russian speakers were quicker to tell a light shade of blue apart from a dark shade of blue.