The Name of the Color is Red

We finally went for a walk, now that the intense cold has retreated a little. Bright white snow still covers everything but the well-plowed streets and some sidewalks. Bright white, contrasting with the dark tree bark and the shadows that they cast on the snow. Looking across one of the fields we pass by, the snow cover formed a sharp, clean line that the forest edge met: bright white, thin line, dark trees.

As we walked through a woods, two bright red Cardinals flew across our path—two flashes of color in an otherwise dark and light scene—and then were gone.

In winter, it’s easy to imagine why languages that have only two color terms those words translate as black and white, or dark and light. The world in winter seems to lose most of its colors. They seep down into the Earth to hibernate; they fly South until Spring.

To be fair, the sky remains blue (“azure”, if you’re fancy), but so often it’s gray (or “grey”, if you’re British). And when the sky does happen to be clear, as it can be on those bitterly cold days, it can be so bright that it’s hard to look at.

And then there are evenings—especially it seems during colder weather—when the sky is clear and the color of the sky forms a breathtaking gradient. During twilight the sky runs from light blue near the horizon, where the sun hasn’t yet fully retreated; to navy blue; to the deepest midnight blue, where you can begin to see the stars just before the sky fades to black directly above you. (I exclaim this out loud Every Single Time I see it, which has justifiably earned me gentle teasing.)

So it’s a bit of a puzzle to me why it is that languages that have only three color terms, universally that third term is “red”. Sure, it kinda makes sense: ripe fruits, blood, dangerous animals and signs that say “DO NOT ENTER”. It just seems like blue should maybe have been given a little more consideration. In any case, light and dark, then red:

Languages, if they have additional color terms, go on to add either green or yellow (or vice versa):

Then blue:

Then brown:

Then gray, purple, pink, orange… (It’s kind of a free-for-all after brown, to be honest.)

There have been some interesting studies done in this area to try to figure out why cultures develop and use color terms in what appears to be a rather strict progression. The evidence seems to point to the way that sensitivity to small differences in color vary over the spectrum of visible light. (My own very intuitive, completely unsupported, non-sensical just plain wrong hypothesis is that the color terms are developed in the order of decreasing wavelength, just like a rainbow.) 

See how they kinda line up with the rainbow?

But if it ever turns out that the color terms are related to the change of seasons, it will not surprise me. After all, here in the upper Midwest in February, the world seems like it’s still stuck with only light and dark. It was nice to see the Cardinals add their statement of red, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of the color terms return to the landscape.