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Roses are red.
玫瑰是红色的。
The sky is blue.
天空是蓝色的。
Oranges are, well, you know, orange.
橘子是橘色的。
Colors seem pretty straightforward.
颜色看起来很简单。
Except that in a lot of languages that aren't English, people don't make the same distinction between green and blue.
除了在很多不是英语的语言中，人们对绿色和蓝色的区分不一样。
Two colors that we totally take for granted when we talk about say,
我们谈论这两种颜色时，都认为是理所当然。
the blue sky or the grass that's always greener on the other side.
比如说，蓝天或草地总是另一边更绿或更蓝。
Do they just think of colors differently, or are they literally seeing something different?
他们只是对颜色的看法不同，还是真的看到了不同的东西？
Believe it or not, scientists who study color aren't sure yet.
信不信由你，研究颜色的科学家还不确定。
But they do think the colors we see and the words we call them have a lot of influence on one another.
但他们认为我们看到的颜色，和称之为颜色的词对彼此有很大影响。
Objectively speaking, colors are definitely real.
客观地说，颜色绝对是真实的。
Colors correspond to wavelengths of light, and the light that we call violet is different from the light we call red.
颜色对应于光的波长，我们称之为紫色的光与我们称之为红色的光不同。
But despite the fact that we can see millions of different colors, somewhere along the way,
但是，尽管我们可以看到数百万种不同的颜色，但在某些时候，
we started grouping some of them into categories and giving those categories names.
我们开始将其中的一些分类，并给这些分类命名。
These categories aren't the only colors, but rather groups of all the crayons you might lump under one broader name, like "brown."
这些类别并不是唯一的颜色，而是所有的蜡笔色彩的组合，可以用一个更广泛的名称，如“棕色”。
Most of the time, when we're just walking around the world looking at colorful things,
大多数时候，当我们在世界各地走来走去看五颜六色的东西时，
we tend to see those categories and use them to talk about color.
我们倾向于看到这些类别，并用它们来谈论色彩。
We see brown rather than, for instance, burnt umber.
我们看到的是棕色，而不是深褐色。
But among scientists, there's a lot of debate about whether we're born with those color categories wired into our brains
但在科学家中，有很多争论是关于我们是否天生就有这些颜色类别连接到我们的大脑中，
or whether, by starting to name colors, we shaped how we see them.
还是我们通过命名颜色来塑造我们对它们的看法。
This idea that your language influences the way you think about the world is called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis,
这种认为语言影响思考世界方式的观点，被称为萨皮尔——沃尔夫假说，
or the linguistic relativity hypothesis.
或语言相对论假说。
And there is some reason to believe that it might apply when it comes to colors… but there's also reason to believe that color categories might be innate.
有理由相信，它可能适用于颜色。但也有理由相信，颜色类别可能是天生的。
The thing to understand about studying this stuff is that it's super hard to do.
学习这些东西需要理解，这是非常困难的。
You can't study someone who already knows the names of colors if you're trying to see if color categories are innate.
如果你想知道颜色类别是否与生俱来，就不能研究那些已经知道颜色名称的人。
So one approach is to look at infants.
所以，一种方法是研究婴儿。
Early studies had mixed results, but more recent ones have found that babies can categorize colors
早期的研究结果各不相同，但最近的研究发现，婴儿可以对颜色进行分类
— and that their neurons fired differently when they saw colors from different categories.
——当他们看到不同类别的颜色时，他们的神经元发出的信号也不同。
Some of these researchers have noted that their findings don't address how language might later shape color perception, like, when you're older.
其中一些研究者指出，他们的发现并没有涉及到语言后来如何塑造色彩感知，比如说，当你长大后会怎样。
But they do at least provide evidence that some color categorization is innate.
但它们至少提供了一些证据，证明某些颜色分类是天生的。
Meanwhile, a 2019 case study of a stroke patient found that even though he could no longer name colors like red or blue,
与此同时，2019年对一名中风患者的个案研究发现，尽管他不再能说出红色或蓝色等颜色，
he could still tell when two colors belonged in the same category or didn't go together.
但他仍能分辨出两种颜色属于同一类别，还是不属于同一类别。
This does seem to suggest color categories are wired fairly deep in our brains.
这似乎表明，颜色类别在我们的大脑中根深蒂固。
But the main way to try to understand our perception of color that we're going to talk about today is to look at people from different cultures who speak different languages.
但是，要想理解我们今天讨论的颜色认知，主要的方法是观察来自不同文化、讲不同语言的人。
At least according to research published by Paul Kay and Brent Berlin in the 1960s, in a study that built the foundation for a lot of color perception research.
至少保罗·凯和布伦特·波林，在20世纪60年代发表的一项研究。这项研究为大量的色彩感知研究奠定了基础。
They looked at the languages of various cultures and came to the conclusion that there are a limited number of basic color categories.
他们研究了不同文化的语言，得出的结论是，基本颜色类别的数量有限。
Not every language has them all, they suggested.
他们建议，并不是每一种语言都有这些颜色类别。
Instead, they believed that languages evolve to acquire color words over time, in seven stages.
相反，他们认为，随着时间的推移，语言通过进化获得颜色词汇可分为七个阶段。
The last stage represented industrialized countries with anywhere from eight to 11 basic color terms.
最后一个阶段代表工业化国家，有八到十一个基本颜色词汇。
The colors, they argued, always appear in the same order:
他们认为，颜色总是以相同的顺序出现：
First black and white, or at least, dark and light.
先是黑色和白色，或至少是深色和浅色。
Then red.
然后是红色。
Then green or yellow.
绿色或黄色。
Then blue.
蓝色。
Then brown.
棕色。
And then finally, purple, pink, orange, or gray.
最后是紫色、粉色、橙色或灰色。
This seemed to suggest that color categories were innate—and it was a cool, elegant theory!
这似乎表明，颜色类别是天生的，这是一个炫酷的理论！
But the theory has its critics, and it's been revised quite a lot since the sixties.
但是这一理论有其批评者，而且自60年代以来已经修改了很多。
Some contemporary researchers argue that Kay and Berlin cherry-picked data to match their theory.
一些当代研究者认为，凯和波林选用了符合他们理论的数据。
And it is somewhat English-centric.
有点以英语为中心。
Not every language or culture has the same color terms, or uses them the same way.
并非每一种语言或文化都有相同的颜色词汇，或使用它们的方式相同。
For example, there are actually enough cultures around the world that don't distinguish between green and blue
例如，实际上在世界很多文化中，是不区分绿色和蓝色，
that researchers in this field usually just call them by their couple name: grue.
该领域的研究人员通常用它们的结合词来称呼：绿蓝。
To get to the bottom of all this, starting in the 1970s, researchers began assembling the World Color Survey.
为了弄清这一切，从20世纪70年代开始，研究人员开始组织进行全球色彩调查。
This documented the color lexicons of 110 unwritten languages from around the world to
这项研究记录了来自世界各地的110种没有文字记录的语言中的颜色词汇，
try to get more data to support, reject, or modify the basic Kay and Berlin hypothesis.
试图获得更多的数据来支持、拒绝或修改凯和波林的基本假设。
They found clusters of basic terms around certain shades, suggesting that black, white, red, yellow, and green-slash-blue
他们发现，围绕某些色调，存在一系列的基本术语，这表明黑色、白色、红色、黄色、绿色、绿蓝色，
may actually be universal color categories.
实际上可能是通用的颜色类别。
Interestingly enough, these color categories also match up with the six colors central
有趣的是，这些颜色类别也与六种颜色相匹配，
to what's known as the opponent-process theory of color vision.
这六种颜色是所谓的颜色视觉的补偿反应理论的核心。
This is one of the two major theories psychologists have proposed to explain
这是心理学家提出的两个主要理论之一，用来解释
how we can see so many colors despite having only three kinds of color receptors in our eyes.
尽管我们的眼睛只有三种颜色感受器，但我们如何能看到如此多的颜色。
So, revisions of the Kay and Berlin theory have floated the idea of just six primary colors,
因此，对凯和波林理论的修正，提出了只有六种原色的想法，
in line with the biology of color vision.
这与颜色视觉生物学相一致。
And they've suggested that other colors are just mashups of the fuzzy boundaries between those six
他们还提出，其他颜色只是这六种颜色之间模糊界限的混搭
-- including the ones like orange and purple that had been considered basic colors.
——包括那些人们认为是基本颜色的橙色和紫色。
They've also focused less on the idea of language "evolution," which was pretty problematic anyway.
他们也较少关注语言“进化”的概念，这无论如何都存在问题。
Industrialized languages' ways of talking about color aren't necessarily some desirable endpoint.
工业化语言谈论色彩的方式未必是理想的终点。
