Can anyone speak Zulu and translate the words "green", "light blue" and "dark blue" to Zulu?

Question

Is it true that each colour translates the same?

Answer 1

While all humans are capable of distinguishing all possible colors, they have not broken up the range of colors in their languages in the same ways. Each "color" blends infinitely and seamlessly into the next, so that in English we have but one word "red", in Hungarian they have divided the "red" part of the spectrum into two colors/words. In English, we have one word "blue", but in Russian that part of the spectrum is covered by two words. So in Zulu, there is a greater range of the spectrum covered by the word that means (in English) "green/blue". This is quite common in the world's languages. No two languages divide the color spectrum up in exactly the same way.