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If I showed you this paint chip and asked you to tell me what color it is, what would you say?
如果我拿这块颜料板给你看，让你说出它的颜色，你会说是什么颜色？
How about this one?
这块呢？
And this one?
这块呢？
You probably said blue, purple, and brown —
你可能会说蓝色，紫色和棕色，
but if your native language is Wobe from Cote d'Ivoire, you probably would have used one word for all three.
但如果你的母语是（南非西部国家）科特迪瓦的沃贝语，你可能会用一个词来指代这三种颜色。
That's because not all languages have the same number of basic color categories.
这是因为并不是所有语言都有着同样数目的基本颜色词。
In English, we have 11. Russian has 12, but some languages, like Wobé, only have 3.
在英语里，我们有11个基本颜色词。俄语里有12个，但有些语言，比如沃贝语就只有3个基本颜色词。
And researchers have found that if a language only has 3 or 4 basic colors, they can usually predict what those will be.
研究人员发现，如果一种语言里只有3~4种基本颜色，研究人员猜都能猜到是哪3~4种。
So how do they do it?
他们是怎么做到的呢？
As you would expect, different languages have different words for colors.
如你所料，不同的语言的颜色词汇不一样。
But what interests researchers isn't those simple translations, it's the question of which colors get names at all.
但研究人员感兴趣的并不是简单的翻译，而是究竟是哪些颜色拥有了姓名。
Because as much as we think of colors in categories, the truth is that color is a spectrum.
尽管我们把颜色分成了不同的类别，但事实是：颜色其实是一个连续的光谱。
It's not obvious why we should have a basic color term for this color, but not this one.
这个颜色是基本颜色，有名称，这个颜色就没有，至于为什么，原因并不是那么显而易见。
And until the 1960s it was widely believed by anthropologists that cultures would just chose from the spectrum randomly.
而且，直到20世纪60年代人类学家还普遍认为，各个文化里的基本颜色不过是从这个光谱里随机抽取出来的几个颜色。
But in 1969, two Berkeley researchers, Paul Kay and Brent Berlin, published a book challenging that assumption.
然而，1969年的时候，（加利福尼亚大学）伯克利分校的两名研究员保罗·凯和布伦特·柏林出版了一本书，向这一假设提出了挑战。
They had asked 20 people who spoke different languages to look at these 330 color chips and categorize each of them by their basic color term.
他们让20个说不同语言的人用他们语言中的基本色对这330个色卡上的每个色卡进行分类。
And they found hints of a universal pattern: If a language had six basic color words,
他们发现，分类结果蕴含着一个普遍的颜色分类模式：如果一种语言有6个基本颜色词，
they were always for black (or dark), white (or light), red, green, yellow, and blue.
那基本就是黑色(或深色)、白色(或浅色)、红色、绿色、黄色和蓝色。
If it had four terms, they were for black, white, red, and then either green or yellow.
如果有4个基本颜色词，通常会是黑色、白色、红色，还有绿色或黄色。
If it had only three, they were always for black, white, and red.
如果只有3个基本颜色词，那一般都是黑色、白色和红色。
It suggested that as languages develop, they create color names in a certain order.
这就表明，随着语言的发展，各个文化对颜色的命名是遵循了一定的顺序的。
First black and white, then red, then green and yellow, then blue, then others like brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray.
最先得到命名的是黑色和白色，接着是红色，再是绿色和黄色，再是蓝色，然后才是其他的颜色，比如棕色、紫色、粉色、橙色和灰色。
The theory was revolutionary.
这一理论简直就是一场革命。
They weren't the first researchers interested in the question of how we name colors.
不过，他们并不是第一个对不同文化如何命名颜色这一问题感兴趣的研究人员。
In 1858, William Gladstone — who would later become a four-term British Prime Minister —
早在1858年，威廉·格拉德斯通——此人后来成了一位连任四届的英国首相——
published a book on the ancient Greek works of Homer.
就出版了一本有关荷马的古希腊著作的书。
He was struck by the fact that there weren't many colors at all in the text,
他惊讶地发现，荷马的著作中竟然没怎么提到颜色，
and when there were, Homer would use the same word for “colours which, according to us, are essentially different.”
即便真的提到，荷马也会用同一个词来“指代在我们看来几乎是不同颜色的多种颜色。”
He used the same word for purple to describe blood, a dark cloud, a wave, and a rainbow,
比如，形容血液、乌云、波浪和彩虹时他用的都是“紫色”这一个颜色词，
and he referred to the sea as wine-looking.
对大海的形容则是“酒一样的颜色”。
Gladstone didn't find any references to blue or orange at all.
格拉德斯通没有找到任何有关蓝色或橙色的词。
Some researchers took this and other ancient writings to wrongly speculate that earlier societies were colorblind.
一些研究人员便以这一发现以及其他古籍为据，得出了早期的人类都是色盲这一错误结论。
Later in the 19th century, an anthropologist named W.H.R. Rivers went on an expedition to Papua New Guinea,
格拉德斯通之后，一位名叫W.H.R.里弗斯的人类学家去了巴布亚新几内亚探险，
where he found that some tribes only had words for red, white and black,
他发现，那边的一些部落只有红、白、黑三个颜色词，
while others had additional words for blue and green.
另外一些部落却还有蓝色和绿色等颜色词。
"An expedition to investigate the cultures on a remote group of islands in the Torres Straits between Australia and New Guinea.
“前往澳大利亚和新几内亚之间的托雷斯海峡的一群偏远岛屿，去那里展开文化探险。
His brief was to investigate the mental characteristics of the islanders."
他的任务是调查岛上居民的心智特征。”
He claimed that the number of color terms in a population was related to their “intellectual and cultural development”.
W.H.R.里弗斯声称，一个人口群体中颜色词的数量与他们的“智力和文化发展程度”有关。
And used his findings to claim that Papuans were less physically evolved than Europeans.
他还根据他的发现指出，巴布亚人身体的进化程度要低于欧洲人。
Berlin and Kay didn't make those racist claims, but their color hierarchy attracted a lot of criticism.
柏林和凯没有发出类似的种族歧视言论，他们研究出的颜色层级倒是招致了不少批评。
For one thing, critics pointed out that the study used a small sample size — 20 people,
首先，批评人士指出，他们的研究使用的样本规模较小——只有20人，
all of whom were bilingual English speakers, not monolingual native speakers.
还全部都是会一门外语的英语人士，而不是只会一种语言的当地人。
And almost all the languages were from industrialized societies — hardly the best portrait of the entire world.
其次，他们考察的所有语言几乎都是已经工业化的社会的语言，所以我们很难说他们的样本是整个人类社会的最佳写照。
But it also had to do with defining what a "basic color term" is.
不过，除了样本规模，对“基本颜色名称”的定义也有影响。
In the Yele language in Papua New Guinea, for example, there are only basic color terms for black, white, and red.
比如，巴布亚新几内亚的耶勒语就只有黑色、白色和红色这三个基本颜色名称。
But there's a broad vocabulary of everyday objects — like the sky, ashes, and tree sap —
但他们有很多指代日常事物——比如天空，灰烬和树液——的词汇，
that are used as color comparisons that cover almost all English color words.
他们用这些词汇来指代颜色，英语里几乎所有的颜色词汇都能在其中找到对应。
There are also languages like Hanuno'o from the Phillippines,
还有一些语言，比如菲律宾的哈努诺语，
where a word can communicate both color and physical feeling.
一个词既能表示颜色，又能表示身体感觉。
They have four basic terms to describe color —
他们有4个描绘颜色的基本词汇——
but they're on a spectrum of light vs.dark, strength vs.weakness, and wetness vs.dryness.
但这四个颜色也是一个明与暗、强与弱、潮湿与干燥的连续体。
Those kinds of languages don't fit neatly into a color chip identification test.
这些语言就不能很好地和色卡识别测试相匹配。
But by the late 1970s, Berlin and Kay had a response for the critics.
不过，到20世纪70年代末，柏林和凯对批评他们的人做出了回应。
They called it the "World Color Survey".
他们的回应就是：“世界色彩调查”。
They conducted the same labeling test on over 2,600 native speakers of 110 unwritten languages from nonindustrialized societies.
他们从非工业化社会的110个使用非书面语言的地方找来了2600多名母语人士进行了同样的颜色分类测试。
They found that with some tweaks, the color hierarchy still checked out.
他们发现，对受试者进行了调整之后，颜色层级依然存在。
Eighty-three percent of the languages fit into the hierarchy.
有83%的语言对颜色的命名都符合他们的颜色层级规律。
And when they averaged the centerpoint of where each speaker labeled each of their language's colors,
当他们对每一位受试者说出的自己的母语中的每一种颜色的中心取以平均值之后，
they wound up with a sort of heat map.
他们最终得到了这样的一张热图。
Those clusters matched pretty closely to the English speakers' averages, which are labeled here.
这些集群的中心和英语人士给出的平均值非常接近，英语人士给出的各个颜色的平均值分别位于这些位置。
Here's how Paul Kay puts it: "It just turns out that most languages make cuts in the same place.
对此，保罗·凯说：“事实证明，大多数语言都是在同样的地方下刀的。
Some languages make fewer cuts than others."
只不过，有些语言下刀的次数没有其他语言的多而已。”
So these color stages are widespread throughout the world…but why?
也就是说，这些颜色层级在世界各地都是一样的，问题是……为什么呢？
Why would a word for red come before a word for blue?
为什么表示红色的词会比表示蓝色的词先出现？
Some have speculated that the stages correspond to the salience of the color in the natural environment.
有人推测，颜色的层级与它们在自然环境中的突出程度是对应的。
Red is in blood and in dirt.
血液和泥土都是红色。
Blue, on the other hand, was fairly scarce before manufacturing.
而在人类调制出蓝色之前，自然界的蓝色是比较少见的。
Recently cognitive science researchers have explored this question
最近，认知科学方面的研究人员也对这个问题做出了探索，
by running computer simulations of how language evolves through conversations between people.
他们用计算机模拟了语言是如何在人与人之间的对话中向前发展的。
The simulations presented artificial agents with multiple colors at a time,
模拟程序对人工智能一次性展示多种颜色，
and, through a series of simple negotiations, those agents developed shared labels for the different colors.
通过连续数次的简单交互，人工智能就给各种颜色进行了相同的分类。
And the order in which those labels emerged?
那这些分类出现的顺序呢？
First, reddish tones, then green and yellow, then blue, then orange.
最先出现的是略带红色的色相，接着是带绿调和黄调的颜色，再然后是蓝色，橙色。
It matched the original stages pretty closely.
和前面提到的保罗和凯的颜色层级非常接近。
And it suggests that there's something about the colors themselves that leads to this hierarchy.
他们的研究还表明，颜色层级和颜色本身也有关系。
Red is fundamentally more distinct than the other colors.
红色本来就比其他颜色更明显一些。
So what does all this mean? Why does it matter?
那么，这一切意味着什么呢？有没有颜色层级有关系吗？
Well, it tells us that despite our many differences across cultures and societies,
事实上，这件事告诉了我们虽然文化和文化之间，社会和社会之间有很多不同之处，
there is something universal about how humans try to make sense of the world.
但我们为理解这个世界做出的努力是有一定的共性的。
