Color Pattern Names

If I were to present to you a paint chip and inquire about its color, what would be your response? Similarly, what about this one? And this one? Presumably, you would identify them as blue, purple, and brown, respectively. However, if your mother tongue is Wobé from Côte d’Ivoire, you would likely employ a single term for all three. This discrepancy arises from the fact that not all languages possess the same number of fundamental color categories. While English has 11, Russian has 12, and certain languages, such as Wobé, only have 3. Researchers have discovered that if a language has only 3 or 4 basic colors, they can typically anticipate what those colors will be. How do they accomplish this feat?

As anticipated, various languages possess distinct terminologies for colors. However, researchers are not solely interested in these straightforward translations; rather, they are intrigued by the inquiry of which colors are assigned names at all. Despite our tendency to categorize colors, the reality is that color is a continuum. It is not immediately apparent why a fundamental color term should exist for one color but not another. Prior to the 1960s, anthropologists widely believed that cultures selected colors from the spectrum arbitrarily. Nevertheless, in 1969, two researchers from Berkeley, Paul Kay and Brent Berlin, published a book that challenged this assumption. They requested 20 individuals who spoke different languages to examine 330 color chips and classify each one according to its basic color term. They discovered indications of a universal pattern: if a language had six fundamental color words, they were always for black (or dark), white (or light), red, green, yellow, and blue.

If the set of color terms comprised four elements, they were designated for black, white, red, and either green or yellow. However, if the set consisted of only three elements, it invariably included black, white, and red. This observation implies that the evolution of language is characterized by a specific sequence in the development of color terms. Initially, black and white are distinguished, followed by red, then green and yellow, and subsequently blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray. This theory represents a groundbreaking perspective on the subject, although it is not the first to explore the question of how color names are assigned.

In 1858, William Gladstone, a future four-term British Prime Minister, authored a publication on the ancient Greek works of Homer. He observed a paucity of colors in the text, and when present, Homer employed the same term for "colors which, according to us, are essentially different." For instance, he utilized the same word for purple to depict blood, a dark cloud, a wave, and a rainbow, and he referred to the sea as wine-looking. Notably, Gladstone did not encounter any references to blue or orange. Regrettably, some scholars erroneously inferred from this and other ancient writings that earlier societies were colorblind.

In the latter part of the 19th century, an anthropologist by the name of W.H.R. Rivers embarked on an expedition to Papua New Guinea. During his exploration, he discovered that certain tribes possessed only words for red, white, and black, while others had additional terms for blue and green. The expedition was conducted with the purpose of investigating the cultures of a remote group of islands situated in the Torres Straits between Australia and New Guinea. Rivers was tasked with examining the mental characteristics of the islanders. He posited that the number of color terms present in a population was indicative of their level of intellectual and cultural development. Based on his findings, he concluded that Papuans were less physically evolved than Europeans.

Berlin and Kay did not make any racist claims; however, their color hierarchy received significant criticism. Critics pointed out that the study's sample size was small, consisting of only 20 bilingual English speakers, rather than monolingual native speakers. Additionally, almost all the languages studied were from industrialized societies, which hardly provided a comprehensive representation of the world. The controversy also stemmed from the definition of a "basic color term." For instance, the Yele language in Papua New Guinea only has basic color terms for black, white, and red. However, the language has a vast vocabulary of everyday objects such as the sky, ashes, and tree sap, which are used as color comparisons that cover almost all English color words. Similarly, the Hanunó'o language from the Philippines has four basic terms to describe color, but they are on a spectrum of light vs. dark, strength vs. weakness, and wetness vs. dryness, and can communicate both color and physical feeling. Such languages do not fit neatly into a color chip identification test.

However, in the late 1970s, Berlin and Kay presented a response to the critics in the form of the World Color Survey. This survey involved conducting the same labeling test on over 2,600 native speakers of 110 unwritten languages from nonindustrialized societies. Through this survey, they discovered that with some modifications, the color hierarchy still held true, with 83% of the languages conforming to the hierarchy. Additionally, by averaging the centerpoint of where each speaker labeled each of their language's colors, they were able to create a heat map that closely matched the averages of English speakers, as shown in the labeled clusters.

The following is Paul Kay's assertion: "It has been discovered that a majority of languages make distinctions in the same manner. Certain languages make fewer distinctions than others." Consequently, these color stages are prevalent globally. However, the reason for this phenomenon remains unclear. Why would a term for red precede a term for blue? Some have hypothesized that these stages correspond to the prominence of the color in the natural surroundings. Red is present in blood and soil, whereas blue was relatively rare before the advent of manufacturing.

In recent times, cognitive science researchers have undertaken an exploration of the question of how language evolves through conversations between individuals, utilizing computer simulations. The simulations involved the presentation of multiple colors to artificial agents, who, through a series of uncomplicated negotiations, developed shared labels for the various colors. The order in which these labels emerged was found to be consistent with the original stages, with reddish tones being the first, followed by green and yellow, then blue, and finally orange. This outcome implies that there is a certain characteristic of the colors themselves that leads to this hierarchy, with red being fundamentally more distinct than the other colors.

What is the significance of this information? Why is it relevant? This data indicates that despite the numerous variations among cultures and societies, there exists a universal tendency among humans to comprehend the world around them.