Almost every language has a word for red before it has one for blue, and that holds even between languages with no contact at all. The obvious explanation is the eye, except the eye is the same everywhere. One study measured how speakers of three very different languages describe the same color chips. What came out?
In every language tested, travel better than cool ones. A listener picks the right red or yellow chip from a description more reliably than the right blue or green. The explanation offered sits in the world rather than in the head: the things worth talking about, fruit, animals and people, tend to run warm, while sky, sea and foliage run cool.
Almost every language names red before it names blue, which sounds like a fact about the eye or about culture. The study pointed somewhere else.
Rather than counting color words, it measured : a speaker describes a chip, a listener tries to choose the right one, and the question is how much actually crosses. Across English, Spanish and , a language of the Bolivian Amazon, warm colors crossed better than cool ones.
The explanation on offer sits in the world. Photographs show that the things people single out, fruit, animals and other people, carry warm shades, while sky, sea and vegetation carry cool ones. The distinction between falls almost along the warm and cool line.
So a language sharpens exactly where sharpness buys something: when you have to pick one thing out for somebody else. Vocabulary that looks arbitrary turns out to track what its speakers need to distinguish. Three languages is a small base, and the claim about objects and backgrounds rests on a photographic sample rather than an experiment, so it shows a fit and not a cause.
wat. A described warm color reaches a listener more accurately than a cool one, and in photographs it is the objects that run warm.
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A language’s vocabulary looks arbitrary. This study traces it to what its speakers need to tell apart.
How do we know?
Speakers of English, Spanish and Tsimane in Bolivia described color chips to a listener, and the study measured how much information actually crossed. Photographs were analyzed in parallel to see which shades fall on objects and which on backgrounds.
What is still unknown
Three languages were tested. The claim about objects and backgrounds rests on a sample of photographs and does not establish cause.
Learn something?
Where to next
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How many different feelings can music raise without saying a word?perception
Is the Mona Lisa’s expression really ambiguous?perception