A really cool study was done recently, looking into the impact of linguistic definitions of color and how they affect our brains during the development of color vision.
In summary, when we are born, we don’t have color vision – it takes several months for us to develop color cells and begin to see in color. As we grow up, and begin to learn language, it seems that the linguistic definitions of color actually impacts how our brains develop and ‘see’ color through our eyes. In other words, if you are a native speaker of a language that possesses one word for what we call “black”, “blue” and “green” those colors will appear very similar, if not identical, to one another.
I’ve included below a video clip from a BBC program detailing the study. Wow. Just really wow.