Hopi colors

[jfran2258]

 A few years ago I was watching a video in an anthropology class about the Hopi. According to this video, the Hopi have four colors: white, red, yellow, and blue. I find this odd since I've been reading about Berlin and Kay's theory of color development. If the Hopi have a word for blue (which I assume covers what English calls green as well as

Comments

[lilacsigil]

There's other reasons to invalidate the theory, but "black" doesn't have to be literally "black" in the language. It can be "dark". They can have either green or yellow.

[flamingophoenix]

Bruise-colored? I know that's not a color term, per se, but it does fit the limits you just said...sort of...

[sollersuk]

I first encountered the green/blue thing as a child via Welsh and met the blue/black thing when I started learning Latin - I found the colour situation easier than the rest of the class as gwyrdd and glas appear to have derived from viridius and glaucus (so I have no idea what the original Celtic pattern was). The main thing I learned that the multitudinous Latin colour terms did not map at all to English or French ones, and was later fascinated to discover that French wasn't the only Romance language to have taken the word for "yellow" from Germanic languages - or indeed to have taken the word for "blue".

So though I admit I have not encountered the theory referred to, I would be very sceptical about any theory that claims what appears from your post to be a simple explanation of colour terms.

[sollersuk]

So how is the distinction between blue and green in the Germanic languages from as early as we have any evidence at all, explained, and how does the theory handle the very long lasting multiplicity of meanings of "caeruleus"? The trigger for the distinction being made in Western Europe seems to have been contact with Germanic languages, where the words themselves were sometimes borrowed, rather than any endogenous development.

[embryomystic]

It's more like a statement of supposed universals, as I understand it: if a given language has two colour words, they'll be white and black, if it has three, they'll be white, black and red, and so on. Disambiguating blue and green comes along rather late in this statement, presumably after white, black, red and yellow.

[bardiphouka]

to the best of my rather shaggy memory, there are four paths in Hopi belief but six colours red,yellow, blue/green,black, white and grey.

[jfran2258]

I saw the film many years ago. Maybe they were referring to four paths. I have no knowledge of the Hopi language so I'm not sure how accurate the film was. Also, I wonder if Hopi has extended its number of basic color term due to influence from other languages.