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- Instead of the standard red (stop), yellow (ready), and green (go), the Japanese have red (stop), yellow (ready), and blue (go) traffic lights.
- The reason for the difference is the Japanese language.
- In any language, words for different colours evolve over a period of time, e.g., the first recorded use of turquoise as a color name in English was in 1573.
- And hundreds of years ago, the Japanese language also had only four colours: black, white, red, and blue.
- Today, the Japanese word for green is midori (緑), but this word didn’t exist till the 8th century.
- And even when it was introduced, it was thought to be a shade of ao (青), i.e., blue.
- Even today, there are categories where green things are referred to as ao and not midori, e.g., leafy green vegetables (ao yasai) and green apples (ao ringo).
- When the traffic lights were introduced in the 1930s, green was the colour for “go” but in the official documents and general conversation, it was referred to as ao (青).
- This led to a bit of confusion, and rather than changing the official documents; the government decided to change the lights to the bluest shade of green possible.
- Now, there is an international convention, the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, which standardises everything related to road signs and colours.
- And all the member countries of this convention need to have traffic lights with red (stop), yellow (ready), and green (go).
- But since Japan never signed this convention, it could continue using the blue shade instead of green.
Image courtesy of Luis Santos through Shutterstock
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