February 9, 2024
2 min read
The Tsimane’ language divides the rainbow into blackish, reddish and whitish. But bilingual Spanish and Tsimane’ speakers are changing that
Like the ancient Greek of Homer’s time, the Tsimane’ language has no set word for the parts of the color spectrum English speakers call “blue.” Although Tsimane’ does name a number of more subjective hues (think “aquamarine” or “mauve” in English), its speakers—the Tsimane’ people of Bolivia—reliably agree on just three main color categories: blackish, reddish and whitish.
But bilingualism is reworking the Tsimane’ tricolor rainbow, researchers recently reported in Psychological Science—offering a rare, real-time glimpse into how learning a second language can change how people think about abstract concepts and fuel language evolution. The data show Tsimane’ speakers who also speak Spanish are borrowing the concepts of—but not the Spanish words for—new color categories such as blue, green and yellow.
“You could have imagined that they could have just started calling things amarillo and azul” (the Spanish words for yellow and blue), says lead author Saima Malik-Moraleda, a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But instead “they’re repurposing their own Tsimane’ color words.”
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Malik-Moraleda and her colleagues asked 152 people who spoke Tsimane’ or Spanish, or both, to name and sort a set of 84 differently colored chips. Bilingual participants sorted the colors into narrower categories in both languages. For example, to describe blue and green chips in Tsimane’, they chose two hazy Tsimane’ color terms, yushñus and shandyes, and…
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