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The English are a ‘People of Colour’

Having recently completed Edward O. Wilson’s flawed tome on updating the Enlightenment: “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge“, I was struck by the passages that he wrote on colour perception. To summarise Wilson’s description, there appear to be four basic units of colour if a wide range of languages are compared: red, yellow, green and blue. However, these units are either incorporated or discarded within the range of human languages.

Human cultures are so diverse that the range of colours or shades within languages stretches from two to eleven. The science of colour perception has now settled upon a consensus that endeavours to construct “a model of the evolution of color terminology systems that attempts to derive the typology and evolutionary trajectories of basic color term systems from facts of color appearance“, as declared by Paul Kay, a distinguished scholar in this field. This school is opposed by the empiricists who follow Piaget’s argument that colour perceptions are learned as part of the environmental stimuli and by the culturalists, who argue that all colour representations are culturally constructed. Both the empiricists and the culturalists reject any role for biology in the formation of colour representations.

One of the most famous and controversial examples of a culture where colour perceptions were limited to two terms was the Dani tribe of New Guinea. They had two terms for what they saw: mola (white) and mili (black), although further study demonstrated that they were able to perceive the full range of colours despite the lack of colour terms in their language. Current experiments conclude that perceptions of colour are not as naturally determined as biological determinists have argued and that perceptions can be altered through linguistic categories, though not to an extent that would justify the conclusions of the empiricists or the culturalists.

At the opposite end of the range is the English language. Wilson concludes that English has eleven terms to describe colour, although others have only identified eight: red, blue, green, pink, purple, orange, yellow and brown. In addition, the Russians have an additional blue hue. Yet, as an Englishman, the question arises how additional colour perceptions in language may influence the culture. As a foundation, one could argue that a language which supports more complex partitions of colour perception may predispose the speakers towards a greater use of simile, description and metaphor: that it aids language, and possibly music, as well as the visual arts. This is a mere speculation. Yet this aspect of the English language, with its panoply of colour perceptions, must have enriched rather than disabled our culture and its impact appears to be unknown.

13 comments to The English are a ‘People of Colour’

  • UnknownSage

    Yes, there’s a bloc in E Europe where there’s one extra fundamental colour term beyond English & most other W European languages: Russian indeed has sinii “dark blue” versus goluboi “light blue”, Czech & Slovak have a normal red “červený” versus bright Communist-red “rudý”, & I think that Hungarian (which though unrelated has been subject to the same “areal” influences) makes the same distinction.

  • John Thackert

    Well, if you’re going to include white and black from the Dani tribe, you should include those in English. Add grey as well, and you’re up to 11– precisely the eleven mentioned in the linked paper. Quite obviously, English has more color terms than just those, but I suppose we’re going for primitives. Languages do develop more color terms in general as civilizations progress.

    Makes it a bit difficult to discuss certain languages like Japanese, for instance; the earlier, native Japanese color words are limited in number (5, corresponding to black (黒い kuroi), white (白い shiroi), red (赤い akai), yellow (黄色い kiiroi), and blue-green (青い aoi)), later imported terms have different conjugation. That doesn’t mean that now Japanese doesn’t use more words for color than they used to, before interaction with first Chinese and then Western culture.

  • D Anghelone

    Why bother with those clowns when you can ask Kodak?

  • Anonymous Coward

    Landlubbers see a boat, or maybe a ship. Sailors see ketches, yawls, sloops, schooners, xebecs, cutters, catamarans and trimarans.

    So what?

  • Joseph

    You touch upon how the words we have for colours in a language may influence our society in our wider way. As a general idea, considering how all the words in our language influence our perception of reality, this is known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

    Please don’t buy into this hypothesis as it allows people to argue that cultures and languages are not only inextricably bound, but also unique. This leads to protection measures and laws against dominant tongues. It has been argued (I forget his name) that speakers are like consumers choosing the best deal, and these laws are simply ‘trade barriers’.

  • >one could argue that a language which supports more complex partitions of colour perception may predispose the speakers towards a greater use of simile, description and metaphor: that it aids language, and possibly music, as well as the visual arts

    How, then, would you explain the fact that Britain never produced a *really* world class composer or visual artist? (cue shouts from enraged Elgar & Turner fans); whereas, prior to the twentieth century, truly great composers were disproportionately German/Austrian and truly great painers Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch – anything but English.

    This picture would look different if you took into account American contributions in the 20th century, but if you’re just looking at the influence of the language then I’d say you have a big underperformance anomaly to explain in British contributions to vsual arts and music.

  • On a related note, I seem to remember reading a New Scientist article about research into whether language affects the way people think. The editorial suggested that if true, it would mean it’s terribly important to preserve languages. Presumably this could only be done with legislation. Yuck!

    Oh, and I’ve also heard it suggested that the difference between men and women is that women think ‘biscuit’ is a colour.

  • Oscar

    I recall a conversation at the Center for Cognitive Study at Harvard in the early 60’s David McNeil was telling me of a study in which Africans who were bilingual in English and some language with only two color words were given one of those tests where the subject is shown a series of cards and asked to classify them into two piles. the deal is that the subject is only told whether they were right or not, and the idea was they were supposed to come up with a classifying concept. As David explained it, the entire experiment was conducted in English (at Michigan where he had been a grad student) but the concept was the two color distinction of the African language. Most subjects had trouble with the experiment, but burst out laughing when the “concept” was finally explained to them.

    Obviously, after 40 years, I can’t recall the researcher or where, or if it was published. But McNeil was an expert in what was at that time called “psycholinguistics”, so I believed his report.

  • Susan

    English has a lot more than 11 words for color. Just in the reds we have scarlett (a bright orangey red), crimson (dark red), cerise (cherry red), and burgundy (wine red). Moreover, hese words are often used in stand-alone contexts, not simply in conjunction with the word “red.”

    And in the blues we have periwinkle (blue with a bit of purple in it), cornflower (a light true blue); sky blue; azure; navy (dark blue); aquamarine and turquoise (blues with varying amounts of green in them — and both used today almost totally in stand-alone contexts.)

    In the browns we have tan (light brown), beige (very light brown), dun (brownish yellow); ochre (yellowish brown;) sienna (reddish brown); taupe (greyish brown) and ecru (another type of light brown). Again, most of these words are used in stand-alone contexts, not simply as descriptors of the color brown.

    I could go on, but I think you get the point.

  • Maniakes

    That got me at first two, but what they’re saying is that there are 11 ‘types’ of colors in English. As you yourself said, scarlett, crimson, cerise, and burgandy are all reds. Likewise with the blues and the browns.

    Give that list of 11 colors to an English speaker and give him an object of any color, and he will be able to describe it in terms of one (or a mix of two) of those 11 colors.

  • Rob Fisher has also heard it suggested that the difference between men and women is that women think ‘biscuit’ is a colour.

    Could be worse. The British think that “biscuit” is a cookie.

  • Gorblimey

    There was a large increase in colour words in English in Shakespeare’s time, often attributed to use of new dyes on fabrics.

    BTW, I was brought up to believe that black and white are not colours.

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