每日口說挑戰 不同語言中的顏色 (The surprising pattern behind color names around the world)

今日挑戰句子

As you would expect, different languages have different words for colors. But what interests researchers isn’t those simple translations, it’s the question of which colors get names at all. Because as much as we think of colors in categories, the truth is that color is a spectrum. It’s not obvious why we should have a basic color term for this color, but not this one.

可想而知地，不同的語言有不同用以形容「顏色」的字詞。但是學者想知道得並非僅只是這些字面上的「翻譯」，而是究竟哪些顏色會被命名。因為儘管我們總認為顏色是種「分類」他其實是一個很大的範圍。因此，我們很難解釋究竟為何這個顏色有被命名，另一個卻沒有。