Color term
A color term is a word or phrase that refers to a specific color. The color term may refer to human perception of that color which is usually defined according to the Munsell color system, or to an underlying physical property. There are also numerical systems of color specification, referred to as color spaces.
An important distinction must be established between color and shape, as these two attributes usually are used in conjunction with one another when describing in language. For example, they are labeled as alternative parts of speech terms color term and shape term.
Psychological conditions for recognition of colors exist, such as those who cannot discern colors in general or those who see colors as sound.
File:Colours in Irish.png|thumb|left|Color wheel with Irish color terms, explaining that glas and gorm are distinguished based on intensity rather than hue. Similarly, buí refers not only to "yellow" and "gold", but pale browns as "buff beige" and "ochre", while dunn is for darker browns. Rua refers to red of hair, whereas dearg refers to red of blood and bándearg is "pale red". Then, Bán, fionn, geal, and liath all refer to varying degrees of brightness or "fairness" — without mapping clearly only the English "white" — against dubh for "dark" or "black".
Color dimensions
Typical human color vision is trichromatic, meaning it is based on a three-dimensional color gamut. These three dimensions can be defined in different ways, but often the most intuitive definition are the dimensions of the HSL/HSV color space:- Hue: representing the different colors of the rainbow or color wheel ; roughly analogous to the color's wavelength or frequency.
- Saturation: the colorfulness of the color, i.e. a measure of vibrant vs. pale.
- Luminosity: a measurement of intensity or 'brightness'.
In natural languages
Lexicology
color words are composed of individual lexemes, or root words, such as 'red', 'brown', 'fuchsia', or 'olive'. The root words generally describe the hue of the color, but some root wordsnamely browncan also describe the other dimensions. Compound color words make use of prefix adjectives, that generally describe the saturation or luminosity, or compounded basic color words, which refine the hue of the color relative to root words. Vaaleanpunainen, the Finnish word for 'pink', is a clear agglutination of the language's words for 'pale' and 'red'.Basic color terms
Basic color terms meet the following criteria:- monolexemic,
- high-frequency, and
- agreed upon by speakers of that language.
An example of a color that comes close to being a basic color term in English is turquoise. It is monolexemic, but is not very high frequency, especially compared to alternatives teal or cyan. It also generally fails the above litmus test in that most people do not find the use of the approximation of other basic color terms to be jarring.
Color-term hierarchy
In the classic study of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, the researchers argued that the differences in number of basic color terms in languages follow a repeatable pattern. Color terms can be organized into a coherent hierarchy and there are a limited number of universal basic color terms which begin to be used by individual cultures in a relatively fixed order. This order is defined in stages I to VII. Berlin and Kay originally based their analysis on a comparison of color words in 20 languages from around the world. The model is presented below, broken into stages, with stage I on the left and stage VII on the right:Berlin and Kay's study identified seven stages of color distinction systems. Each progressive stage features a color term that the previous stages do not.
Stage I (dark and light)
Stage I contains two terms, white and black ; these terms are referenced broadly to describe other undefined color terms. For example, the Yali highland group in New Guinea identify the color of blood as black. This is because blood, as a relatively dark liquid, is grouped into the same color classification as black.In the Bassa language, there are two terms for classifying colors: ziza and hui.
In the Pirahã language, there appear to be no color terms beyond describing lightness and darkness.
The Dani language of western New Guinea differentiates only two basic colors: mili for cool/dark shades such as blue, green, and black; and mola for warm/light colors such as red, yellow, and white.
Stage II (red)
Stage II implements a third term for red. Objects begin to rely less on their brightness for classification and in this stage we instead see each term cover a larger scope of colors. Specifically, blue and other darker shades continue to be described as black, yellow and orange colors are classified with red, and other bright colors continue to be classified with white.In the Bambara language, there are three color terms: dyema, blema, and fima.
Stage III/IV (yellow + green)
Stage III identifies a third term referring either to green or yellow. Most languages in the study with this system identify yellow over green, such as the Komi language, where green is considered a shade of yellow, called турун виж . However, the Nigerian Ibibio language and the Philippine Hanunoo language both identify green instead of yellow.The Ovahimba use four color names: zuzu stands for dark shades of blue, red, green, and purple; vapa is white and some shades of yellow; buru is some shades of green and blue; and dambu is some other shades of green, red, and brown. It is thought that this may increase the time it takes for the Ovahimba to distinguish between two colors that fall under the same Herero color category, compared to people whose language separates the colors into two different color categories.
| Stage IV | white red yellow green black/blue | white red yellow green/blue black |
Stage IV incorporates green or yellow, whichever was not already present, i.e. stage IIIa languages will adopt yellow and stage IIIb languages will adopt green. Most stage IV languages continue to colexify blue and green, as listed in Blue–green distinction in language.
The Chinese character 青 has a meaning that covers both blue and green. In more contemporary terms, they are 藍 and 綠 respectively. Japanese also has two terms that refer specifically to the color green, and グリーン.
Stage V (blue)
Stage V introduces blue as its own color term, differentiating from black or from green.Stage VI (brown)
The seventh basic color term is likely to be brown.In English, this is the first basic color term that is not differentiated on hue, but rather on lightness. English splits some hues into several distinct colors according to lightness: such as red and pink or orange and brown. To English speakers, these pairs of colors, which are objectively no more different from one another than light green and dark green, are conceived of as belonging to different categories.
Stage VII
Stage VII adds additional terms for orange, pink, purple, or gray, but these do not exhibit the same hierarchy as the previous seven colors.English contains eleven basic color terms: 'black', 'white', 'red', 'green', 'yellow', 'blue', 'brown', 'orange', 'pink', 'purple', and 'gray'.
Stage VII+
Languages with further color distinction use relativistic light/dark terms like light blue/ dark blue, or pale red/ deep red.Italian, Russian and Hebrew have twelve basic color terms, each distinguishing blue and light blue. A Russian will make the same red/pink and orange/brown distinctions, but will also make a further distinction between синий and голубой, which English speakers would call dark and light blue. To Russian speakers, sinii and goluboi are as separate as red and pink, or orange and brown.
Hungarian and Turkish distinguish multiple words for 'red': piros and vörös, and kırmızı, al, and kızıl ; kırmızı now includes all reds but originally referred to crimson, to which it is cognate, while kızıl mainly refers to scarlet and other orange-tinted or brownish reds. Two words for 'red' are also found in Irish and Scottish Gaelic:. Turkish also has two words for 'white' and 'black'. Ak and beyaz have the same meaning, while kara is a broader term than siyah and also includes dark browns; which word is used also depends on the kind of object being described. Both ak and kara are of Turkic origin, while siyah is borrowed from Persian, and beyaz from Arabic بياض bayāḍ.
In Serbo-Croatian there are differences in dark brown, brown, red, pink, and orange, as well as in blue hues: navy blue, dark blue, blue, and ash blue.
An interesting case that deviates from this pattern is Irish's two words for green:
- glas denotes the green color of plants
- uaine denotes artificial greens of dyes, paints etc.