Notes from Hanunoo folkbotony.
Philippines
Harold Conklin
A classic
Color categories
Color in a western technical sense is not a universal concept in many languages
Biologically, color discrimination is probably the same for all human populations
irrespective of language.
The manner differs between language groups for how humans classify the
millions of colors which every normal person can discriminate.
Perceptual screening takes place based on the classification system in a particular
language.
In English, the largest collection of color names runs to over 3,000 entries.
Only eight of these occur commonly in people’s everyday language.
Studies show that the ways a particular language structures its color
classifications likely influences color distinction or perception in language
speakers.
Color terms are part of the vocabulary of particular languages.
Hanunoo color classification
Harold Conklin was studying and comparing how people in different cultures
classified and named colors. In the Philippines, with the Hanunoo peoples, he set
up a display of different colored paint cards, dyed fabrics and other previously
prepared materials. He asked people to look at the cards and fabrics and identify
the colors.
The informants responded with many inconsistencies, meaning the the Hanunoo
peoples did not give the same answers to his color questions.
His methods for studying and comparing color terms were based on Western
language assumptions about color classification. They were based on how English
speakers, for example, think about and categorize color. His methods were
problematic in the Hanunoo language environment.
He changed his methods to better reflect how Hanunoo speakers classified and
categorized colors.
He asked them to identify colors of things in their natural environment and in the
context of everyday life.
When he changed his methods, Hanunoo speakers answered his questions with
much greater agreement. In this situation confusion and incongruity of
informants did not usually occur.
In other words, when people responded to non-formal, visible quality such as
with plant parts – when the task wasn’t set up in a formal organization for the
purpose of a study – then there was agreement with relative ease.
Conklin had to re-examine all of the color data that had been collected.
He discovered that color distinctions in Hanunoo are made at two levels of
contrast.
First their language compels Hanunoo speakers to participate in all-inclusive,
coordinate, four-way classifications that are at the core of the color system.
In the Hanunoo language, the four-way classifications at the core are connected
to a second level of classification. This second level consists of hundreds of
specific color categories at several sublevels which overlap.
To better explain:
(The first level of contrast – the four-way classification level)
There was unanimous agreement among respondents on the first level
categories.
1.
2.
3.
4.
The first level includes a distinction of colors into four categories.
(ma) biru – relative darkness (of shade of color) blackness (black)
(ma) lagti – relative lightness (or tint of color) whitness (white)
(ma) rara – relative presence of red; redness (red)
(ma) latuy – relative presence of light greenness; greenness (green)
Boundaries separating these categories are not set in absolute terms. The focal
points within the four sections can be limited more or less to black, white, orange,
red, and leaf-green respectively.
For example, mbiru includes the range usually covered in English by black, violet,
indigo, blue, dark green, dark gray and deep shades of other colors and mixtures.
In Hanunoo, all color terms can be reduced to one of these four, but none of
the four is reducible.
For the second level of contrast, there was a lack of unanimity in how people
responded because at this level the context and circumstances in which the colors
occur are key to identifying and specifying color.
This second level of color terms is combined with the first level of color terms.
Level two color terms designate color categories of greater specification within
the four recognized, level one, color realms.
Level two categories
1. First there is the opposition between light and dark in contrasted
ranges.
2. Second there is opposition between dryness or desiccation and
wetness of freshness in visible components of the natural environment
This distinction is of particular significance in terms of plant life.
Fresh, succulent and greenish parts.
Shiny wet brown colored sections of newly cut bamboo
Dried out or matured plant material
3. A third opposition dividing the two already suggested is that of deep,
unfading, indelible and more desired material against pale, weak
faded bleached or colorless substance.
The green is the most tangibly visible in their jungle surroundings – the color of
natural vegetation, and is not valued decoratively.
Much attention to naming colors is paid to the texture of the surface referred
to, the resulting degree and type of reflection and to admixture of other
nonformal qualities.
These noncolorimetric aspects are often considered of primary importance.
There is difference in the ready color vocabulary of men as compared to women.
Men excel in the degree of specification to which they carry such classification
terminology in the ranges of reds and grays – animals, hair, feathers.
Women excel in blues shades of indigo dyed fabrics.
No discernible similar difference holds for the greens or whites.
So the Hanunoo color system can be reduced at the most generalized level to
four basic terms and then these terms are associated with lightness, darkness,
wetness, and dryness.
In other words, the color system combines level one with level two, and these
color associations are highly dependent upon where the colored item exists and
its comparative surroundings.