Blue on blue

[Jonathan Lighter]

I read about this so long ago that what follows is probably best decribed as "inspired by an actual event."

Anthropologists identified a nonliterate culture whose language contained only three color words. They arrived with a collection of  wooden blocks painted in about a dozen seemingly distinct colors and induced a test group to sort the blocks by color.

When the smoke cleared, all the blocks were in the dozen or so batches that you'd expect if the researchers had done the study in Topeka.

Participants in the test group explained that anybody could see there were only three colors in the world, but they came in various unnamed shades. If you needed to make fine distinctions, as in the study or when weaving colorful clothing, you'd have to say "x like the sky or "x like a leaf."

After the anthropologists went home, the people laughed for many days. "They can put a man on the moon, but they need us to sort their colors!   Now everybody dance!"

Can anyone refer us to the original study?

JL







Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Paul Frank

Subject: Re: Blue on blue
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> I didn't expect that "red" vs. "orange" would be so much fun! Let's try
> another.
>
> In English we have a single word, "blue," for a color that has several
> different "shades." On the other hand, Russian has *two* words for
> "blue": sinii, which means, approximately, colors similar to the
> "shade" that English-speakers term "dark blue," and "goluboi," which
> means, approximately, colors similar to the "shade" that
> English-speakers term "light blue," though it also has a literal
> meaning, "dove-colored." Supposedly, for a Russian, these two "colors"
> are as distinct as "red" and "orange" are for English speakers. And,
> like "orange," "goluboi" is based on the name of an object that
> epitomizes that color.
>
> -Wilson Gray

And in Chinese, the word (and character) qing (first tone) means
nature's color; green; blue; greenish black. Although in modern Chinese
blue and green can be distinguished by saying lanse (blue) and lüse
(green). I don't know whether this affects color perception among the
Chinese.

Paul
___________________________
Paul Frank
English translation from Chinese,
German, French, and Spanish
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
http://tinyurl.com/5av5h

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