杏吧原创

In 1969, anthropologist Brent Berlin and linguist Paul Kay controversially proposed that all cultures recognise two basic colour categories 鈥� black and white 鈥� and that the more highly evolved a culture is, the more colours are represented in its language, up to a maximum of 11. Linguist Annie Mollard-Desfour had never heard of Berlin and Kay when she counted the colours in the French language and got to 11, but she too is convinced that colour perception is culturally defined. She told Laura Spinney how the language of colour reveals fundamental differences in the way humans view the world.

How did you come to be interested in colour?

As a child I spent time in the French Midi, with its extraordinary light and colours. My grandfather was a painter. He gave me a taste for observation and I painted prolifically too, trying to capture the colours I saw. To begin with my feeling for colour was purely sensual, emotional. But later, as an art student, I learned about the technique of transmitting that colour feeling.

In 1975, you gave up art and turned to language. Why was that?

I had studied literature, particularly the works of Colette, and had been impressed by her extremely sensual descriptions. I began to think about how one paints with words. What do colour words convey? As a linguist with CNRS (the French national research agency) I collaborated on a major dictionary of the French language spanning the 19th and 20th centuries. When I got to 鈥渃鈥� I had to define colour words by their cultural connotations and usages. I was struck by how fluid the terms were within the 11 broad categories 鈥� how they came and went over time. That was when I had the idea for a dictionary of colour, though I wasn鈥檛 able to dedicate my time to it fully until 1992.

What is it about colour that fascinates you?

There is no objective reality of colour. It鈥檚 an impression, a sensation which forms in the brain based on information sent to it by the visual apparatus. To label that sensation, to transmit it to others, we revert to familiar symbols. Colour words, perhaps more than any others, reflect a society: its values, its practices, its history. In Benin in west Africa, for example, men and women have different colour vocabularies. Searching for colour words in literature, the press or slang, as I do, you are forced to confront the enormous diversity in the way different cultures, different symbolic systems, view the world.

Do these differences give rise to misunderstandings?

They do, especially when people use colours to send messages. Take white. In France, it symbolises purity, cleanliness, honesty, but in China it鈥檚 the colour of mourning. I think this might be one reason why S茅gol猫ne Royal, the Socialist candidate for president of France this year, made such a bad impression when she visited China in January. She was wearing her campaign colour, white.

How do colour terms change over time?

In 19th-century France, brun ramoneur (chimney-sweep brown) and vert empire (empire green) were popular colours. The references have vanished, and so have the colours. The notion of an orange revolution is a recent invention, and orange is back in vogue. Then there are colours whose connotations have changed. Black is a negative colour in French culture, but whereas it used to suggest austerity and mourning it became the colour of youth and rebellion and, by extrapolation, of chic. This went wider than France. Think of Marlon Brando鈥檚 black leather jacket. The menace remained, but the meaning became enlarged.

Is it just the sociological properties of colours that evolve, or also their perceived physical properties?

Both. The French, for example, have three parameters of colour 鈥� hue, brightness and saturation. The relative importance of these parameters has changed over time. Latin has two words for black: niger or brilliant black and ater or lustreless black. Gradually, niger or noir came to encompass all blacks. Similarly, we dropped the Latin albus (matt white) and candidus (brilliant white) and adopted a German word for all whites 鈥� blank or blanc. These days we pay much more attention to hue than to brightness.

Why should brightness matter less now?

It鈥檚 hard to say. Possibly we lost the religious connotations that gave us the dazzling light of truth and the impenetrable black of hell. Interestingly, the brightness of a colour is more important to a Japanese person than its hue 鈥� that is, whether it is red, blue, yellow鈥� The Japanese language has a large number of words for white, from the dullest to the most brilliant.

Do French and English speakers use colour words differently?

The social references are different. In French, for example, to describe someone as bleu (blue) is to suggest they are a novice. The word in English is green. When an English speaker refers to a blue movie he probably means a film with pornographic content. As a French person, I would describe that movie as pink.

These associations appear to be arbitrary but at some point in the past they must have been grounded in the physical world, like brun ramoneur. In fact, it鈥檚 when that physical association is obvious that the differences in the way cultures perceive colours can be most surprising. For example, Italians describe the yolk of a hen鈥檚 egg as rosso dell nova-tuorlo, where rosso translates into English as red. The French call the same thing le jaune d鈥檕euf (the yellow of the egg). There is a French expression which in English becomes 鈥渁t night all cats are grey鈥�, but the Hungarian version of this translates as 鈥渁t night all cows are black鈥�.

Do colour terms become more difficult to translate, the further away or the more exotic the culture you are studying?

Yes. In French, colour is generally perceived as a separate category from the five senses, but many cultures lack colour-specific terms. They may describe colours in terms of emotions, as in China, or in terms of other senses. Certain African cultures talk of colours as being rough, smooth, laughing, deaf, talkative, hard or soft. The Hanunoo people of the Philippines recognise a fourth parameter besides hue, brightness and saturation: humid-dry. These kinds of synaesthesias are hard to translate. What is a humid colour? As a French person, I would imagine something sugary, pink or red, but an English speaker might have a different idea.

What is the significance of colour in your own life?

I鈥檓 very sensitive to colours in my environment. I have a bit of a revulsion for orange and yellow, and I like to sleep in a blue room. Perhaps that sensitivity is why I like to wear sombre colours, particularly black 鈥� because it doesn鈥檛 draw attention to itself. My taste for black pre-dates its chic period. I started wearing it in the 1970s, when in France, at least, it still symbolised the Corsican widow.

鈥淚鈥檓 very sensitive to colours. Perhaps that鈥檚 why I wear black鈥�