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Bampot@lemmy.world

How do Namibian Himbas see colour? (gondwana-collection.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by Bampot@lemmy.world to c/jingszo@lemmy.world

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One of these studies was done with regards to the Himba tribe in Northern Namibia!

The Himba tribe is a branch of the Herero tribe that has been isolated from most modern societies, with this I mean that they have chosen to maintain their traditional lifestyle rather than adopting traditions from western cultures.

The tests they performed were done with individuals that could not speak any other languages, and the researchers used translators to communicate with the Himbas. They used different coloured tiles to put together a baseline of colour groupings according to the Himba language.

What they found was intriguing.

Western languages have eleven colour categories, ie. green, blue, yellow, red, white and so forth, but the Himbas only have five. These include:

Serandu – is used to describe reds, browns, oranges and some yellows.

Dambu – includes a variety of greens, reds, beige and yellows, and is also the term used for a Caucasian person.

Zuzu – is used to described most dark colours, black, dark red, dark purple, dark blue, etc.

Vapa – is used for some yellows and white.

Buru –is used to describe a collection of greens and blues.

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[–] user_name@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I don’t know about this study, but we have other linguistic examples of this. From Homer we get the wine-dark sea and I think I’ve read other things talking specificallt about blue being a late-emerging distinct color in a lot of languages.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I've read similar, but the question surrounding a genetic component seems to have gone unanswered throughout. There's a strong correlation between genetics and language, especially ancient ones, given the relative isolation. How do we know that these languages don't just largely reflect what the speakers could physically see?

[–] Bampot@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution (1969; ISBN 1-57586-162-3) is a book by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay. Berlin and Kay's work proposed that the basic color terms in a culture, such as black, brown, or red, are predictable by the number of color terms the culture has.

Berlin and Kay posit seven levels in which cultures fall, with Stage I languages having only the colors black (dark–cool) and white (light–warm). Languages in Stage VII have eight or more basic color terms. This includes English, which has eleven basic color terms. The authors theorize that as languages evolve, they acquire new basic color terms in a strict chronological sequence; if a basic color term is found in a language, then the colors of all earlier stages should also be present. The sequence is as follows:

Stage I: Dark-cool and light-warm (this covers a larger set of colors than just English "black" and "white".)

Stage II: Red

Stage III: Either green or yellow

Stage IV: Both green and yellow

Stage V: Blue

Stage VI: Brown

Stage VII: Purple, pink, orange, or gray

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms