Color. Simple, right?
I am absolutely in love with a study about color terms that was done in 1969 by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (link below). It blew my mind. Essentially, basic color terms are defined by a set of rules:
- They must be monolexemic – such as red, but not dark red in English.
- They cannot be a type of another color term, such as cobalt.
- Everyone must be able to understand them. You couldn’t say the color of my mother’s car, for example.
In English, we have eleven color terms: black, white, gray, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, and brown. In contrast, some languages only have…drumroll please: two or three. They have black, white, and (typically) red. The rest of the colors are categorized under the main terms, such as green being called black. Think about that next time someone tells you they like your black shirt.
So, is it possible for a language with limited color terms to expand its range to be more specific?
It turns out, yes! In 2023, a group of researchers did a study on speakers of the Tsimane’ language in Bolivia (link below). Tsimane’ is unique because it only has three consistent color terms: black, white, and red. The study surveyed monolinguals who spoke Tsimane’, monolinguals who spoke Bolivian Spanish, as well as Tsimane’ bilinguals who learned Bolivian Spanish.
Fun fact: Bolivian Spanish has twelve consistent color terms, even making a distinction between light and dark blue. It’s ideal for this kind of research.
The researchers’ discovery? Those who spoke both Tsimane’ and Bolivian Spanish were able to differentiate color more precisely, especially when it came to green and blue.
Black, white, and red all over? Color terms. Black, white, and read all over? A newspaper.
Read More
Merrifield WR. Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, Basic color terms: their universality and evolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1969. Pp. xi + 178. Journal of Linguistics. 1971;7(2):259-268. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226700002966.
Malik-Moraleda, S., Mahowald, K., Conway, B. R., & Gibson, E. (2023). Concepts Are Restructured During Language Contact: The Birth of Blue and Other Color Concepts in Tsimane’-Spanish Bilinguals. Psychological Science, 34(12), 1350-1362. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231199742.