“The phylogenic tree also shows that
another language may have lost blue as a color term over time.”
That’s what
the article said. It was in the Boston
Globe Sunday Edition, the Ideas section.
That’s the section filled with articles written by people who live in
‘think tanks’ and assorted ivory towers.
It’s often the
only section that I read, because I’m curious about what the people in those
towers and tanks think. They’re
different, you know.
Anyway this
article was expounding on the conundrum of whether our language shapes our
worldview, or our worldview shapes our language. Specifically, it was looking at the
hierarchal order of color names in languages.
I was almost
snoozing off when I came to that bit about a language losing blue.
How can you
lose blue?
The previous
paragraph mentioned the curious fact that another language had no term for red,
even though red is high on the hierarchy, but that did not give me pause. Maybe those folks never bleed, or blush, or
grow tomatoes, or wear ugly Christmas sweaters.
But
blue? I mean, the friggin’ SKY is
blue! And if the term is lost, that
means they once HAD a term for blue.
Maybe they ceased to care about blue, or distinctions blurred? “No, no,” they would say, “It’s that other green that I’m talking about.”
It’s a good
thing I don’t work in that think tank. I
wouldn’t have a green thumb for growing phylogenic trees. I’d be forever stuck on that losing blue
thing.
.
2 comments:
Forty years ago, when I was minoring in anthropology, this subject was often referred to as the Shapir-Wolfe Hypothesis, and it was being hotly debated. I see it's still being hotly debated!
If I recall, all languages have at least three words for colors, in addition to black and white. And don't quote me on this, but I seem to remember that they are yellow, green, and some other one. That is, if a language has only three words for colors, those are the colors every time.
If it has four words for colors, then every time, the fourth word is blue.
But don't quote me. It's been forty years! The only part of all that that I'm absolutely certain of is that there is a strong pattern to it. Three words, always the same three colors. Four words, always the same four colors, etc.
You've got a pretty good memory, Paul! Thanks for the comment.
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