Color Facts
Fun Facts
Our eyes can distinguish between millions of colors. Yet each language has a limited number of words to describe the main colors. Some languages only have two names for basic colors, others more. English has eleven basic color names, and the Russian language has twelve.
The 11 basic English color words that everyone knows are black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple, and gray. If you are an artist, you may know 50 to 100 other colors such as turquoise, amber, indigo, or taupe. But these are only a small fraction of the colors we can see.
Languages pick up color words in a particular order. If a language only has words for two colors, they are always black (dark) and white (light). In languages with three words for colors, the colors are always black, white, and red. If there are only four color words in a language, they will always be black, white, red, and yellow or green. After a language has yellow and green the next color is blue. (Based on studies by linguists Brent Berlin and Paul Kay.)
Homer, the ancient Greek author, never mentions the colors blue or orange. He used the word for purple to describe very different things like blood. a dark cloud, a wave, or a rainbow. He described the sea as wine-looking.
The human eye can see more shades of green than any other color.