Color Matters Blog
Where the Oceans Meet the Mountains
It’s green but it seems blue. Or does it? The Storm King Wavefield is a permanent installation by Maya Lin in Mountainville, N.Y. Seven parallel rows of rolling, swelling peaks on 11 acres were inspired by the forms of midocean waves but echo the mountains and hills around them. It’s made of natural materials: dirt and grass.
This evocative landscape of mountains and waves - greenness and blueness - raises a linguistic fact about color. Many languages do not have separate terms for blue and green. For example, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, and Chinese have color terms that cover both. Also, the Japanese word for blue (ao) is used for colors that English speakers would refer to as green, such as the traffic light for “go.”
Sources
Storm King WaveField- Where the Oceans Meet the Mountains
Distinguishing blue from green in language
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