If this interests you, Through the Language Glass: How Words Colour Your World by Guy Deutscher is a must read.
- Most languages developed a word for the color red before any other colors. Probably because blood is red and uniquely present at the most dramatic times of life.
- Blue is rarely seen in nature, and so many cultures wouldn't feel the need to distinguish between purple and blue, because neither was seen very often. There is one obvious exception though, the blue sky. Although anecdotal, the author used some precious scientific equipment, his daughter, to perform an experiment. He purposely avoiding telling his daughter the color of the sky, yet taught her the color of many physical objects. Once he was sure she knew all the colors he finally popped the question on a clear day: "What color is the sky?" His daughter seemed confused and eventually decided that the sky was white.
If not, it's likely she ran across the word blue in conversations she had with others, in books and stories, on television, movies, songs, etc.
I am very skeptical of how much of value could be drawn from such an experiment unless the person in question is completely isolated. Even then, that kind of isolation is likely to have deep psychological consequences that could taint the experiment even then. That's not to mention the severe and possibly insurmountable ethical problems such a study would run in to these days.
> Most languages developed a word for the color red before
> any other colors. Probably because blood is red and
> uniquely present at the most dramatic times of life.