In Japan , a game of Red Light , Green Light might be more like Red Light , Blue Light . Because of alinguistic quirkof Japanese , some of the nation ’s street light feature " go " signals that are clearly more blasphemous than green , asAtlas Obscuraalerts us , stimulate the rural area an outlier in international road plan .
Different languages come to to colorsvery differently . For instance , some language , likeRussianandJapanese , have different words for light blue and sinister blue , treat them as two trenchant coloring . And some languages chunk colouring English speakers see as distinct together under the same umbrella , using thesame wordfor green and aristocratic , for instance . Again , Japanese is one of those speech . While there are now separate terms for blue and gullible , inOld Japanese , the wordaowas used for both colors — what English - speaking learner labelgrue .
In modern Japanese , aorefers to low , while the wordmidorimeans green , but you may see the overlap culturally , include at traffic intersections . Officially , the “ go ” color in traffic light is calledao , even though traffic lights used to be a regular green , Reader ’s Digestsays . This posed a linguistic conundrum : How can bureaucrat call the lightsaoin prescribed lit if they ’re reallymidori ?
Since it was save in 1968 , scads of countries around the world havesignedthe Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals , an international pact aimed at standardizing dealings signals . Japan has n’t signed ( neither has the U.S. ) , but the land has nevertheless move toward more internationalized signals .
They terminate up splitting the difference of opinion between international legal philosophy and linguists ' yell . Since 1973 , the Nipponese administration has decreed that traffic lights should be green — but that they be the aristocratical shade of William Green . They can still dispose asao , but they ’re also unripe enough to meangoto foreigner . But , as Atlas Obscura points out , when equipment driver take their licensing test , they have to go through a vision test that includes the power to distinguish between ruddy , yellow , and blue — not immature .
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