The Universal Order of Color Naming Across Cultures
0:00 Languages vary in their basic color categories, ranging from 3 to 11, unlike simple translations across languages, it involves which colors get named at all.
0:00:52 Color is a spectrum, and cultures decide which parts of the spectrum to name, instead of random spectrum selection
0:01:07 Kay and Berlin challenged random color naming, finding patterns in how languages develop color terms.
0:01:21 Languages with six basic color words tend to include black, white, red, green, yellow, and blue.
0:01:40 Color naming tends to follow an order: black and white, then red, then green and yellow, then blue, followed by brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray.
0:02:07 Gladstone analyzed Homer's writings and found little mention of blue and orange
0:02:41 Rivers studied color naming in New Guinea, finding varying levels of color vocabulary among tribes which was then misconstrued and misused to correlate intelligence and cultural development of different races.
0:02:55 Rivers investigated mental characteristics of islanders to relate population traits to intellectual/cultural development.
0:03:45 Basic color terms exist for black, white, and red in some languages, with other colors being described using object associations.
0:04:01 Some languages combine color and physical feeling in a single word.
0:04:29 The World Color Survey studied 2,600 native speakers of unwritten languages to validate the color hierarchy.
0:04:39 The study confirmed the proposed color hierarchy across languages.
0:05:16 The emergence of color terms is linked to the salience of the color in the natural environment, with red being common in blood and dirt.
0:05:24 Blue was historically scarce until manufacturing became widespread.
0:05:28 Computer simulations of language development showed the same color naming order: black and white, red, then green and yellow, then blue, then orange.
0:06:00 The hierarchy might be due to colors themselves leading to this hierarchy.