Most of us have remained unaware of this interesting topic, but there is a question that has plagued the world of psychology for some time now, “What came first, thought or language?” Now obviously it shouldn’t come as a shock that there is no concrete answer to this question, but rather opinionated arguments backed by research.
A question that has popped up as well is whether the language you speak influences the way you perceive colour…the thought sounds a bit crazy right? How could a specific language have an effect on something that should look the same to most human beings? The thing is it can. A variety of tests and research has been conducted using various cultural groups as subjects, which has led to fascinating results! One of these studies – conducted by Debi Roberson, Jules Davidoff, Ian R. L. Davies and Laura R. Shapirowho, all academics– 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.This has allowed the community to develop their linguistic abilities within the use of their own language only, and no external influences.
So what the group attempted to research was whether or not the Himba community sees things differently to other cultures, by looking at the way their language has affected their perceptions of colour.
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.
Himba colours – Image: Blogs transparent
Because of the ways in which their colours are categorised, it influences the way Himba’s perceive the colours. During the research, the group of Himbas who were tested were given a collection of twelve coloured tiles – eleven were the same colour and one different – arranged in a circle, and asked to choose the one that looked different to the others. The initial tests were conducted using eleven tiles of one shade of green and one tile slightly lighter or darker. To western eyes the difference would take a while to notice, however the Himba’s were able to quickly pick out the different shade of green.
Green colour tiles
Following this, they did a similar test, but the circle then consisted of eleven green tiles and one blue tile. It took the Himbas a longer period of time to find the difference between the blue and the green. The reason for this is that the Himba language has more terms describing different shades of green, where blue and green is grouped together under the same term. This phenomenon makes it harder for the Himbas to differentiate between the colours that we deem completely different from one another. The findings supported the claim that language can in fact affect the way in which you see colour.
Both colour tests – Image: Media tumblr
If you want to know more about this topic, the article Color categories: Confirmation of the relativity hypothesis has all the information you need and can direct you to additional articles. For those not overly fond of detailed reading, check out the video by BBC on the research done on the Himbas.
If you have further interesting information regarding this type of colour perception, we invite you to share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Author – Jescey Visagie is a proud Namibian and is passionate about writing and language. Tag along for the ride as she tries to uncover new insights into Namibia and explores what the country has to offer.
This is an interesting read. Of course language affects they way different groups of people see or define colours. However, I have two reservations. One, the research was subjective by using tiles colours that they OvaHimba people may not have been exposed to before in their day to day lifestyle. This may have rendered the results to be somewhat less accurate. In retrospect it can also be argued that it is not true that the OvaHimba people have 5 colour groupings or catergories, simply because the colour green (they call otjiNgirine) and Blue (they call otjiMburau) are borrowed terminologies/names known to the OvaHimba people who do not even speak Western languages. Needless to say the two are not in anyway Otjihimba or Otjiherero words. Hence, it becomes debatable whether we can still say “language affects the way one sees” as some colourd categories are actually borrowed from the West. These leaves the researchers with three original OvaHimba colour categories (for argument sake). By extension, OvaHimba people may have more or less categories categories. Against there is no such colourd as Buru, Dambu, Zuzu in the Otjiherero or OtjiHimba language. The words were very loosely. One supposes that the writer was refering to; Mburau (Blue), Ndumbu (Yellow/Orange) and Zoozu (Black/Dark coloours). Its also important to note that the OvaHimba people also have stand alone colourd catergories made out of combination of colourds to form a total different which may not fall under any of the “identified 5 colourd categories”. However, for whoever cares to use the information. It was a good and rare research dimension. Write to me for more information: rhingom28@gmail.com.
Hi Rhingo
Thank you very much for your insight. We will ensure to make reference from your contribution in the near future. Kind regards, Koney
I live near Hereroland, of our farm assistants are Ovaherero speaking. Their colour names are: oserandu (red), ongara (yellow), ombambi (brown), ondrondu (black), ombapa (white), otjihoni (orange/brownish, but! maybe not that but check patterned or irregularly dotted…..I couln’t make it out properly), omblou (blue, word actually afrikaans word “blou”), ongrien (green…english “green”). For shades of the colour the word ondumbe (meaning very or strong or dark) or the word ondjere (meaning light, not so very) is put behind the name of the colour.
If you are interested I can find out about the colour names in Bushman as well, but I cannot write the click sounds.
Anka Eichhoff
Hi Anka
Thank you very much for your interesting contribution. We will make good use of your feedback in the future. Kind regards, Koney
The word used for green (if it is not ongrien) is something like “fresh” referring to foliage of plants.
The Bushmen have MANY, MANY names for different colour shades, for the colour green at least six different words. Interesting is” woman know the words better than the men according to one of our workers.
It seems that different ethnic groups seem to look differently at things……a matter of importance of colour in the specific language?
Anka E.
To me, this seems scientifically flawed. Correlation does not mean causation! How was it checked that Himba don’t name colours differently, because they actually cannot see the difference? Maybe for genetic reasons? I have to dig deeper, but the original article only says that all participants of the study were subjected to a colour blindness test beforehand, without further information. Clearly that test checked something else, because obviously they cannot properly distinguish blue and green.
For the conclusion to be valid that language affects colour perception, they should find individuals from the same genetic pool that *have* learned a different language and *are* able to identify the different colours. Or maybe expose teach them a different language for a sufficient time and repeat the tests.
Yep, when I saw this I, too, was amazed. Sadly, it’s a very misleading piece by the BBC. UPenn linguist, Mark Liberman, debunked this piece on the Language Log, run out of UPenn’s Institute for Research in Cognitive Science (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=17970 and its near-immediate followup, http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18237). From the latter:
“So to sum the story up as I understand it: The experiment shown in the documentary was a dramatization; the genuine color experiments done with the Himba, some years before, used a different sort of stimuli and a different experimental method; the stimuli shown in the documentary were modeled on those used by Paul Kay and others in experiments on other groups; but in all of the relevant experiments, the dependent measure was reaction time (in finding a matching color or an oddball color), not success or failure.
“The BBC’s presentation of the mocked-up experiment — purporting to show that the Himba are completely unable to distinguish blue and green shades that seem quite different to us, but can easily distinguish shades of green that seem identical to us — was apparently a journalistic fabrication, created by the documentary’s editors after the fact, and was never asserted by the researchers themselves, much less demonstrated experimentally.
“This explains why the “experiment” was never published, and why the stimuli shown in the documentary don’t make sense.
“As a result, the striking and impressive assertions made in the documentary must be completely discounted, and we learn yet again that the BBC deserves shockingly little credibility in reporting on science.”
FYI, that BBC experiment video was faked.