语言能改变你我眼中的色彩_BEC初级作文

语言能改变你我眼中的色彩

Different languages and cultural groups also carve up the colour spectrum differently. Some languages like Dani, spoken in Papua New Guinea, and Bassa, spoken in Liberia and Sierra Leone, only have two terms, dark and light. Dark roughly translates as cool in those languages, and light as warm. So colours like black, blue, and green are glossed as cool colours, while lighter colours like white, red, orange and yellow are glossed as warm colours.

不同的语言和文化群体，划分色谱也截然不同。一些语言，比如如巴布亚新几内亚所说的丹尼语，利比里亚和塞拉利昂所说的巴萨语，颜色只有两个词，“暗”和“亮”。“暗”大致可译为其他语言中的冷色调，“亮”为暖色调。所以黑、蓝、绿等颜色可解释为冷色，而白、红、橙、黄等浅色调可解释为暖色。

The Warlpiri people living in Australia's Northern Territory don't even have a term for the word "colour". For these and other such cultural groups, what we would call "colour" is described by a rich vocabulary referring to texture, physical sensation and functional purpose.

瓦尔皮里人生活在澳大利亚北部，这些土著的语言里甚至没有“颜色”一词。对于类似这种文化的人类群体而言，我们所谓的“颜色”，他们是用各种指代材质、身体感觉和功能目的的词来描述。

Remarkably, most of the world's languages have five basic colour terms. Cultures as diverse as the Himba in the Namibian plains and the Berinmo in the lush rainforests of Papua New Guinea employ such five term systems. As well as dark, light, and red, these languages typically have a term for yellow, and a term that denotes both blue and green. That is,these languages do not have separate terms for "green" and "blue" but use one term to describe both colours, a sort of "grue".