Name: 不同語言中的顏色 (The surprising pattern behind color names around the world)
Uploaded: 2023-07-09T21:01:30.000Z
Duration: 6 min 45 s

過去簡單式

If I showed you this paint chip and asked you to tell me what color it is, what would you say?

如果給你看這張色卡並問你它是什麼顏色，你的答案是什麼？

You probably said blue, purple, and brown,

你可能會說它們是藍色、紫色和咖啡色，

but if your native language is Wobé from Côte d’Ivoire,

但如果你的母語是象牙海岸的 Wobé 語，

you probably would have used one word for all three.

你大概會用同一個詞來稱這三種顏色。

That's because not all languages have the same number of basic color categories.

因為並不是所有語言對顏色的分類都一樣。

Russian has 12, but some languages, like Wobé, only have 3.

俄文有十二種，但有些像是 Wobé 的語言就只有三種。

And researchers have found that if a language only has 3 or 4 basic colors,

研究人員發現，如果某種語言只有三或四類顏色，

they can usually predict what those will be.

As you would expect, different languages have different words for colors.

如大家所想，不同語言形容顏色的詞彙不同。

But what interests researchers isn't those simple translations, it's the question of which colors get names at all.

但研究人員有興趣的並不是簡單的翻譯問題，而是哪些顏色會被命名。

Because as much as we think of colors in categories, the truth is that color is a spectrum.

因為儘管我們認為顏色以種類劃分，色彩其實更像是光譜。

It's not obvious why we should have a basic color term for this color, but not this one.

我們選擇某顏色命名，而非另一個的原因並不顯而易見。

And until the 1960s, it was widely believed by anthropologists that cultures would just chose from the spectrum randomly.

直至 1960 年代，人類學家仍普遍認為各文化在光譜間挑選顏色命名是隨機的。

But In 1969, two Berkeley researchers, Paul Kay and Brent Berlin, published a book challenging that assumption.

但 1969 年，兩位柏克萊的研究者 Paul Kay  和 Brent Berlin 出版了一本質疑了此假設的書。

They had asked 20 people who spoke different languages to look at these 330 color chips

他們請二十位不同母語的人看以下 330 種色卡

and categorize each of them by their basic color term.

And they found hints of a universal pattern.

如果母語人士的語言中有六種基本顏色詞彙，

they were always for black (or dark), white (or light), red, green, yellow, and blue.

就會是黑(或深)、白(或淺)、紅、綠、黃和藍色。

If it had four terms, they were for black, white, red, and then either green or yellow.

如果語言裡有四種詞彙，就會是黑、白、紅，還有綠或黃。

If it had only three, they were always for black, white, and red.

如果語言裡只有三種詞彙，則會是黑、白、紅。

It suggested that as languages develop, they create color names in a certain order.

研究顯示，隨著語言發展，顏色名稱的出現有一定順序。

First black and white, then red, then green and yellow, then blue,

先是黑和白，然後是紅色，再來是綠或黃，接著是藍色，

then others like brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray.

然後是其他顏色，如褐色、紫色、粉色、橙色和灰色。

They weren't the first researchers interested in the question of how we name colors.

他們並非第一個對於顏色命名有興趣的研究團隊。

In 1858, William Gladstone, who would later become a four-term British Prime Minister,

1858 年，William Gladstone ，也就是之後連任四屆的英國首相。

published a book on the ancient Greek works of Homer.

出版了一本關於希臘詩人荷馬的書。

He was struck by the fact that there weren't many colors at all in the text,

令他驚訝的是，史籍裡沒有太多關於顏色的詞彙，

and when there were, Homer would use the same word for "colors which, according to us, are essentially different."

若要形容某種顏色時，荷馬會用同樣的詞彙來形容「對我們來說，顏色在本質上是不相同的」。

He used the same word for purple to describe blood, a dark cloud, a wave, and a rainbow.

他用代表紫色的單字來形容血液、烏雲、海浪和彩虹。

And he referred to the sea as wine-looking.

Gladstone didn't find any references to blue or orange at all.

Gladstone 沒有發現任何提到藍色或橙色的文字。

Some researchers took this and other ancient writings to wrongly speculate that earlier societies were colorblind.

一些研究者根據這篇文章和其他古代著作，錯誤地推測古代人有色盲的問題。

Later in the 19th century, an anthropologist named W.H.R. Rivers went on an expedition to Papua New Guinea,

到了十九世紀，另一位名為 W.H.R.Rivers 的人類學家到巴布亞紐幾內亞探險，

where he found that some tribes only had words for red, white, and black,

發現有些民族只有代表紅色、白色和黑色的單字，

while others had additional words for blue and green.

而其他民族則另有代表藍色和綠色的詞彙。

"An expedition to investigate the cultures on a remote group of islands in the Torres Straits between Australia and New Guinea.

「有考察團到介於澳洲和新幾內亞內之間，與世隔絶的托雷斯海峡群島上做文化的調查。

His brief was to investigate the mental characteristics of the islanders."

他的任務是考察島民的心智素質。」

He claims that the number of color terms in a population was related to their "intellectual and cultural development".

他指出人口中描述顏色的詞彙數量和他們的「智力和文化發展」有關。

And he used his findings to claim that Papuans were less physically evolved than Europeans.

然後他用研究發現來主張，巴布亞紐幾內亞人與歐洲人相比，身體結構較不進化。

Berlin and Kay didn't make those racist claims, but their color hierarchy attracted a lot of criticism.

Berlin 和 Kay 並未提出這種具有種族歧視的論點，但他們的顏色層級理論引來不少批評。

For one thing, critics pointed out that the study used a small sample size ⏤

其中一個原因是，批評者指稱該研究的樣本數太少。

20 people, all of whom were bilingual English speakers, not monolingual native speakers.

受試者只有二十人，全是會說英語的雙語人士，並非只會單一語言的人。

And almost all of the languages were from industrialized societies,

研究對象的母國都是工業社會，

hardly the best portrait of the entire world.

But it also had to do with defining what a "basic color term" is.

但對基本顏色的定義也是影響因素之一。

In the Yele language in Papua New Guinea, for example, there are only basic color terms for black, white, and red.

例如，巴布亞紐幾內亞的耶里多涅語，基本顏色詞彙只有黑、白和紅。

But there's a broad vocabulary of everyday objects, like the sky, ashes, and tree sap,

但對於一般事物的形容詞彙很多，像是天空、塵土和樹木汁液，

that are used as color comparisons that cover almost all English color words.

這些詞彙被用來描述顏色差異，涵蓋幾乎所有的英語顏色詞彙。

There are also languages like Hanunó'o from the Phillippines,

也有像菲律賓群島上的古爪哇語，

where a word can communicate both color and a physical feeling.

一個字詞既可用來描述顏色，也能形容身體感受。

They have four basic terms to describe color,

該語中有四個用來形容顏色的基本詞彙，

but they're on a spectrum of light vs. dark, strength vs. weakness, and wetness vs. dryness.

但它們的依據是色光譜上的深淺、強弱和乾濕。

Those kinds of languages don't fit neatly into a color chip identification test.

這種語言的詞彙並不完全符合一般色卡測試。

But by the late 1970s, Berlin and Kay had a response for the critics.

但到了 1970 年代晚期，Berlin 和 Kay 對這些批評做出了回應。

They conducted the same labeling test on over 2,600 native speakers of 110 unwritten languages from non-industrialized societies.

他們對超過 2600 名身處非工業社會的人做了相同的調查，語種涵蓋 110 種非書寫語言。

They found that with some tweaks, the color hierarchy still checked out.

他們發現微調之後，顏色層級的理論同樣成立。

Eighty-three percent of the languages fit into the hierarchy.

百分之八十三的語言符合顏色層級定律。

And when they averaged the centerpoint of where each speaker labeled each of their language's colors,

取得每位研究對象對顏色標示的平均值後，

Those clusters matched pretty closely to the English speakers' averages, which are labeled here.

圖中的密集區域非常接近英語使用者的平均——也就是現在圖上的標記。

"It just turns out that most languages make cuts in the same place.

「結果顯示，多數語言的顏色分割點都一樣，

Some languages make fewer cuts than others."

有些語言的顏色分類較少而已。」

So these color stages are widespread throughout the world, but why?

所以色彩詞彙發展是全球共通的，但為什麼呢？

Why would a word for red come before a word for blue?

Some have speculated that the stages correspond to the salience of the color in the natural environment.

有人臆測此順序與自然環境中顏色的顯著性相對應。

Blue, on the other hand, was fairly scarce before manufacturing.

相對的，藍色在工業時代前則很少見。

Recently, cognitive science researchers have explored this question

近日，認知科學研究者開始用電腦來探索這個問題，

by running computer simulations of how language evolves through conversations between people.

模擬語言如何隨人類之間的溝通演變。

The simulations presented artificial agents with multiple colors at a time,

電腦模擬透過人工智慧同時顯示多種顏色，

and through a series of simple negotiations,

those agents developed shared labels for the different colors.

電腦開發出不同顏色的共同標記。

And the order in which those labels emerged?

這些顏色標記出現的順序為何呢？

First, reddish tones, then green and yellow, then blue, then orange.

首先出現紅色調，其次是綠色和黃色，再來藍色，最後橙色。

It matched the original stages pretty closely.

這結果和原本的順序相當接近。

And it suggests that there's something about the colors themselves that leads to this hierarchy.

這表示顏色本身的特質導致了這種層級分布。

Red is fundamentally more distinct than the other colors.

Well, it tells us that despite our many differences across cultures and societies,

這讓我們了解，儘管不同文化及社會間存在差異，

there is something universal about how humans try to make sense of the world.

人類試著理解世界的方式某程度上還是相通的。