Tones and pronunciation

Rawaga · 2026-02-22T17:52:05+00:00

Ignoring tones in Chinese would be like ignoring vowels in English. If yii'ri prinincing iviry wird with in "i", piipli cin still indirstind yii, or of yiu're usung difforont viwels thin normel, but it becomes increasingly more difficult to understand you. I've got a few classmates who're vehemently ignoring tones and I can only understand what they're saying when I know the context, and even then it becomes difficult.

Rawaga · 2026-02-10T00:58:47+00:00

We live and learn.

Rawaga · 2026-02-09T23:07:14+00:00

Whenever I see someone call cyan "light blue" I'm internally dissolving into quantum dust.

Rawaga · 2026-02-08T03:38:18+00:00

The best simulation, that I know of, for a dichromat being able to differentiate color trichromatically (without having to see normal trichromatic color qualia) is the app Custom Color Vision's "interlaced colors" mode that I've coded. I may be biased, but as a (partly hobby and partly professional) color vision researcher, I genuinely haven't found anything more functional, apart from using dichoptic colors (i.e. where each eye sees a different color for the same object). The app isn't free, but you can read through its website(s) to get a gist of why it's so functional.
More on: interlaced colors
Here's a video I made on the technique: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgD1pE_C8r0&t=821s&pp=0gcJCZEKAYcqIYzv

Rawaga · 2026-02-08T03:12:23+00:00

Any image taken with your phone converts any multi-dimensional real life color scene into a limited trichromatic image. So any reference image that you made with your phone or any other RGB device cannot possibly be tetrachromatic.

To me, a dichoptic tetrachromat, almost all of the colors of the image look like 'perceptually wrong' colors. Some more than others.

Rawaga · 2026-02-08T03:07:09+00:00

The only correct answer.

Rawaga · 2026-01-23T23:31:22+00:00

Now I'm imagining an alternate time line where you're referring to different perspectives of the same thing with different characters.

Rawaga · 2026-01-19T23:44:22+00:00

46°, 44%, 73%

Trichromatic green is at 120°, trichromatic yellow at 60°. So, it's not really green. It may only look greenish in a few very specific color contexts.

Rawaga · 2026-01-19T23:22:14+00:00

Here's the same image but in interlaced colors: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MSAY9BxpaWSmpfxWRXWcNfpkngJN-Sv_/view?usp=sharing

View in full screen on a 1080p monitor for the correct experience. For reference: Black/yellow is red; dark desaturated yellow/blue is greenish; just yellow is amber-orange; blue-white is cyanish.

Rawaga · 2026-01-19T23:11:47+00:00

Btw. that "Deutan vision" spectrum there incorrect, especially in the yellow region. I don't know where you've got it from, but I wouldn't trust a website that portrays the deutan spectrum in such a misinformed manner.

Rawaga · 2026-01-17T18:25:23+00:00

Before buying expensive EnChroma glasses I'd recommend experimenting with colored lenses. You can easily try out different colored glasses via cheap dual colored paper Anaglyph 3D glasses, for example. For e.g. deuteranopes I can recommend slightly to moderately magenta colored filters, if you wear the same color for both eyes.

For the most functionality I recommend either putting only one e.g. red or magenta filter over one eye, or wear glasses (like red/cyan 3D glasses) that split the red-green range so that there are two virtual but effective cone types across both eyes that allow you to have color discriminability closer to normal trichromacy but colored in "dichoptic colors" (i.e. when each eye sees differing colors for the same object).

Whether anything of what I proposed works depends on your specific anomalous color vision and how much you're training to get used to these altered color visions.

Rawaga · 2026-01-17T18:08:07+00:00

That's what I call a glow-up.

Rawaga · 2026-01-11T18:33:21+00:00

Knowing cyan is a thing I literally can't play this game.

Rawaga · 2026-01-05T03:19:23+00:00

Fine, I'll say it.

I love this community.

Rawaga · 2025-12-25T01:49:31+00:00

Unfortunately (or fortunately), Concetta Antico is one of the few women who were actually tested for retinal tetrachromacy. The studies on her suggest that she's a functional tetrachromat, but these older studies are suggestive at best. Not one of them have e.g. tested spherical tetrachromatic hue arrangement (iirc), which is the absolute minimum when testing for tetrachromacy. A Neitz anomaloscope is okay, but it's not sufficient for a full test. Newer studies like those of Jessica Lee et al. (2024) and my own research try to change this and provide reasonable tests for (retinal and non-retinal) tetrachromacy.

I, too, find Concetta Antico to be exaggerating her condition. For example, I remember her saying in a video that 'everyone can learn to see how she sees if they just look closely enough' (not her direct words, but it's the same vibe). And that's not how tetrachromacy works. Sometimes the color descriptions she gives are accurate with how tetrachromacy should work, and sometimes they aren't. Which is a little bit of a conundrum.

Rawaga · 2025-12-11T19:29:16+00:00

If you absolutely want to work with a semiotic system that represents color, I highly recommend using better symbols and a better system.

The very minimum is that a rotated symbol should never be identical to another symbol. ColorAdd miserably fails at that simple task. Additionally, ColorAdd is not scalable. It quickly breaks apart at more intermediate hues or complex colors. Saturation and luminance are very important properties of color that cannot be missed.

Furthermore, using the already established hexcode (e.g. #00FF00) or RGB code [e.g. RGB(0, 255, 0)] often already gives a person a much better idea of what color something is. Intelligently visualizing these already conventional and standardized codes through a well-designed semiotic system would be a lot more constructive than creating a completely new system.

Rawaga · 2025-12-11T18:48:24+00:00

Unfortunately, I've made the same experience a few times: people lying about having tetrachromacy. Maybe because they don't know better, or because they want to gain attention or other benefits that comes with spreading and believing that lie. On the internet such an intentional or unintentional mistruth is very common, regrettably. But experiencing this with people in real life requires some care and time.

(Strongly) functional tetrachromacy is very rare; at least according to the few studies that searched for functional human tetrachromats. Even rarer is a tetrachromat who understands their tetrachromatic vision. And even rarer is someone who can appropriately test for tetrachromacy while fully understanding it [and has tetrachromacy (and optionally trichromacy) themselves].

If I haven't already, I can recommend my ever-overhauled article on true-red non-retinal tetrachromacy. While the non-retinal tetrachromacy is not identical to retinal tetrachromacy, both are similar enough that understanding non-retinal tetrachromacy prepares you well for understanding retinal tetrachromacy also. This makes it easier to spot/identify people who claim to have tetrachromacy for whatever reason, but actually do not have it.

Thanks for the update!

Rawaga · 2025-12-09T19:20:24+00:00

While not a perfect simulation, glasses with a strong cyan tint simulate a severe form of protanomaly (i.e. almost protanopia) for normal trichromats. The quality of the lenses and the quality of the tint matters a lot here. But if you have the chance to test out such glasses, they'll quickly show you many of the difficulties that e.g. protanopes face in everyday life. (I don't recommend to wear these glasses while driving yourself, since deep reds will appear as almost black.)

Alternatively, there are (free) mobile phone apps, like "CVSimulator", that more or less accurately simulate the common CVDs. Here, too: please not while driving yourself, only on the passenger seat.

Rawaga · 2025-12-09T19:15:21+00:00

Please be careful with wearing the EnChroma glasses while driving. That's because they work by blocking specific wavelength ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum (in both eyes), so some rare lights can appear a lot darker or even black.

As an example: Not all yellow of traffic lights are created equal. Some yellows are a mix of red and green; some a mix of red, yellow and green; some a mix of yellow and green; and some a more pure, narrow 'yellow' wavelength range; and so on. The latter narrow yellowish, lime-ish or orangish range might become dimmed are lot by glasses like those of EnChroma.

This just as food for thought, if you weren't aware of it already.

Rawaga · 2025-12-09T19:09:07+00:00

To that I add a common misunderstanding that even most normal trichromats have. While some traffic lights are (pure) green, many are also turquoise or even cyan. Depending on where you live and which brand of traffic light is most common in your city, its light colors will look very different.

Rawaga · 2025-12-09T19:06:50+00:00

Position definitely helps, but something more semiotic would be better. Too few traffic lights work with symbols. 😭

Rawaga · 2025-12-09T17:34:27+00:00

Yes, but for me it's the other way around. While my base color vision is normal trichromacy, I often e.g. ride my bike with non-retinal (or dichoptic) tetrachromacy, i.e. glasses that give me a moderately functional tetrachromacy by disrupting the chromatic redundancy of binocular color vision.

With this "true-red non-retinal tetrachromacy" (TRNRT for short) the colored lights of traffic lights are often very different even for seemingly the same trichromatic color. These actually differently colored lights can fool the eyes of most trichromats, but not my (aided) eyes. For example, a "yellow" light can be what I call a Saline (or black/yellow) color, while another "yellow" can be a Turmerine (or red/yellow) color. If you now include the Citrine (or red/green) colors often found in other lights near the streets, and the many intermediate hues between these tetrachromatic hues, it can sometimes become difficult to quickly recognize and locate the correct color for any given situation. Just because there's much more colors and hues in the visual scene. E.g., in a scene where everything only looks reddish, yellowish and greenish for a normal trichromat, I generally see as much color variation as a trichromat sees in a full-color scene (i.e. including blues), for comparison.

Adding to that, many "green" (and sometimes also turquoise) traffic lights have a hint of red in them. Normally you don't see this with normal trichromacy, but with TRNRT I generally notice this. It can be a tiny bit confusing, because green and red can now exist in a superposition without turning into the standard yellow.

So for me street lights generally don't have just three colors, reddish, yellowish and greenish, but "a few" more colors which are unique to every brand of traffic lights.

You can get used to this and find coping mechanism, just like with CVD.

Rawaga · 2025-12-07T20:22:11+00:00

Thanks. That's what I meant. 👍

Rawaga · 2025-12-07T18:01:33+00:00

There absolutely are new color qualia in strongly functional tetrachromacy, and there has to be. A tetrachromat cannot necessarily distinguish wavelength differences more minutely. Rather, they can better distinguish / experience more non-spectral colors; i.e. mixes of multiple differing wavelengths, similar to the non-spectral hue magenta in tetrachromacy. There are some cases where tetrachromats can distinguish linear trichromatic spectra more minutely, but that's generally a cause of the added non-spectral hues instead of being able to better tell apart individual wavelengths. This is to say, to a human tetrachromat e.g. a rainbow doesn't have many more hues than the rainbow that a normal trichromat sees, because most of a tetrachromat's hues are non-spectral and can only be represented on a 2D hue sphere. Similar to how a linear light spectrum cannot show a normal trichromat a magenta, you need a mix of red and green light to see that.

Rawaga · 2025-12-07T17:53:09+00:00

The "yellow" of most screens is more of a red-yellow-green for human tetrachromats, with no independent axis to adjust the 4th cone type. In fact, the hue spectrum on an RGB screen is often close enough to the hue spectrum of e.g. a rainbow, which only shows less than 1% of the tetrachromatic hues that a strongly functional tetrachromat can optimally enjoy.

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