Shadowing Practice: The surprising pattern behind color names around the world - Learn English Speaking with Video
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If I showed you this paint chip and asked you to tell me what color it is, what would you say?
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How about this one, and this one?
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You probably said blue, purple, and brown, but if your native language is Wobe from Côte d 'Ivoire,
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you probably would have used one word for all three.
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That's because not all languages have the same number of basic color categories.
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In English we have 11, Russian has 12, but some languages like Wobbe only have three
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and researchers have found that if a language only has three or four basic colors
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They can usually predict what those will be So how do they do it?
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As you would expect different languages have different words for colors
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But what interests researchers isn't those simple translations.
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It's the question of which colors get names at all
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Because as much as we think of colors in categories, the truth is that color is a spectrum.
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It's not obvious why we should have a basic color term for this color, but not this one.
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And until the 1960s, it was widely believed by anthropologists that cultures would just choose from the spectrum randomly.
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But in 1969, two
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Berkeley researchers, Paul Kay and Brent Berlin, published a book challenging that assumption.
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They had asked 20 people who spoke different languages to look at these 330 color chips
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and categorize each of them by their basic color term.
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And they found hints of a universal pattern.
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If a language had six basic color words, they were always for black or dark, white or light, red, green, yellow, and blue.
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If it had four terms, they were for black, white, red, and then either green or yellow.
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If it had only three, they were always for black, white, and red.
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It's suggested that as languages develop, they create color names in a certain order first black and white, then red, then green and yellow,
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then blue, then others like brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray.
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The theory was revolutionary.
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They weren't the first researchers interested in the question of how we name colors.
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In 1858, William Gladstone, who would later become a four -term British Prime Minister, published a book on the ancient
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Greek works of Homer.
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He was struck by the fact that there weren't many colors at all in the text,
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and when there were, Homer would use the same word for, quote, colors which, according to us, are essentially different.
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He used the same word for purple to describe blood, a dark cloud, a wave,
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and a rainbow, and he referred to the sea as wine -looking.
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Gladstone didn't find any references to blue or orange at all.
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Some researchers took this and other ancient writings to wrongly speculate that earlier societies were colorblind.
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Later in the 19th century, an anthropologist named W .H .R.
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Rivers went on an expedition to Papua New Guinea, where he found that some tribes only had words for red,
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white, and black, while others had additional words for blue and green.
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An expedition to investigate the cultures on a remote group of islands in the Torres Straits between Australia and New Guinea.
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His brief was to investigate the mental characteristics of the islanders." He claims
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that the number of color terms in a population was related to their,
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quote, "...intellectual and cultural development." And he used his findings to claim that Papuans were less physically evolved than Europeans.
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Berlin and Kay didn't make those racist claims, but their color hierarchy attracted a lot of criticism.
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For one thing, critics pointed out that the study used a small sample size — 20 people,
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all of whom were bilingual English speakers, not monolingual native speakers.
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And almost all of the languages were from industrialized societies, hardly the best portrait of the entire world.
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But it also had to do with defining what a basic color term is.
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In the Yele language in Papua New Guinea, for example, there are only basic color terms for black, white, and red.
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But there's a broad vocabulary of everyday objects, like the sky, ashes, and tree sap,
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that are used as color comparisons that cover almost all English color words.
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There are also languages like Hanuno 'o, from the Philippines, where a word can communicate both color and a physical feeling.
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They have four basic terms to describe color, but they're on a spectrum of light vs. dark, strength vs. weakness, and wetness vs. dryness.
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Those kinds of languages don't fit neatly into a color chip identification test.
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But by the late 1970s, Berlin and Kay had a response for the critics.
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They called it the World Color Survey.
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They conducted the same labeling test on over 2 ,600 native speakers of 110 unwritten languages from non -industrialized societies.
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They found that with some tweaks, the color hierarchy still checked out.
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83 % of the languages fit into the hierarchy.
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And when they averaged the center point of where each speaker labeled each of their language's colors, they wound up with a sort of heat map.
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Those clusters matched pretty closely to the English speaker's averages, which are labeled here.
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Here's how Paul Kaye puts it.
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It just turns out that most languages make cuts in the same place.
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Some languages make fewer cuts than others.
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So, these color stages are widespread throughout the world, but why?
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Why would a word for red come before a word for blue?
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Some have speculated that the stages correspond to the salience of the color in the natural environment.
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Red is in blood and in dirt.
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Blue on the other hand was fairly scarce before manufacturing.
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Recently, cognitive science researchers have explored this question by running computer simulations of how language evolves through conversations between people.
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The simulations presented artificial agents with multiple colors at a time, and through a series of simple negotiations,
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those agents developed shared labels for the different colors.
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And the order in which those labels emerged?
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First, reddish tones, then green, and yellow, then blue, then orange.
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It matched the original stages pretty closely.
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And it suggests that there's something about the colors themselves that leads to this hierarchy.
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Red is fundamentally more distinct than the other colors.
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So what does all this mean?
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Why does it matter?
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Well, it tells us that despite our many differences across cultures and societies,
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there is something universal about how humans try to make sense of the world.
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Thank you.
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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección
Esta lección de conversación se basa en el vídeo “The surprising pattern behind color names around the world”. Las palabras que más se repiten: color, language, word, blue, term. Este vídeo tiene 66 frases y 1058 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 6:22. El hablante habla a un ritmo natural de unas 166 palabras por minuto, cercano a una conversación cotidiana. Solo el 79 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés, por lo que el vocabulario es exigente.
Vocabulario clave de este vídeo
15 palabras del vídeo que vale la pena aprender, con su pronunciación y significado:
| Palabra | Pronunciación | Significado |
|---|---|---|
| researcher sustantivo | /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/ | investigador, investigadora |
| label sustantivo | /ˈleɪ.bəl/ | etiqueta, rótulo |
| hierarchy sustantivo | /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/ | jerarquía, hierarquía (disused) |
| purple sustantivo | /ˈpɝ.pl̩/ | morado, púrpura |
| chip sustantivo | /t͡ʃɪp/ | astilla, cepa |
| spectrum sustantivo | /ˈspɛktɹəm/ | espectro |
| universal adjetivo | /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/ | universal |
| investigate verbo | /ɪnˈvɛs.tə.ɡeɪt/ | indagar |
| expedition sustantivo | /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/ | expedición |
| critic sustantivo | /ˈkɹɪt.ɪk/ | crítico |
| simulation sustantivo | /ˌsɪm.jəˈleɪ.ʃn̩/ | simulación |
| evolve verbo | /ɪˈvɑlv/ | desarrollar |
| tone sustantivo | /ˈtəʊn/ | tono |
| everyday adjetivo | /ˈɛvɹiˌdeɪ/ | de diario, cuotidiano |
| cloud sustantivo | /ˈklaʊ̯d/ | nube, nimbo |
Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar
| Palabra | Significado |
|---|---|
| check out verbo | investigar, chequear |
| point out verbo | señalar, apuntar |
| turn out verbo | resultar |
Gramática en este vídeo
Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:
| Estructura | En el vídeo |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + participio pasado — una acción pasada que sigue importando ahora | have found · have speculated · have explored |
| Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace | was struck · are labeled |
| Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa | people who spoke · averages, which are |
Pronunciación a tener en cuenta
El hablante usa 7 contracciones y formas reducidas, como didn't, weren't, don't. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.
- Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, simulation /ˌsɪm.jəˈleɪ.ʃn̩/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, translation /tɹænzˈleɪʃən/, artificial /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/
- Palabras largas — cuida el acento: hierarchy /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/, universal /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/, investigate /ɪnˈvɛs.tə.ɡeɪt/, expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/
Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:
- s + consonante al inicio — sin añadir una “e” delante: spectrum /ˈspɛktɹəm/, scarce /ˈskɛɚs/, speculate /ˈspɛk.jʊˌleɪt/
- /v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: universal /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/, investigate /ɪnˈvɛs.tə.ɡeɪt/, evolve /ɪˈvɑlv/, everyday /ˈɛvɹiˌdeɪ/, revolutionary /ˌɹɛvəˈluʃənɛɹi/
- /z/ — sonora, no /s/: translation /tɹænzˈleɪʃən/, physically /ˈfɪz.ɪ.kli/, categorize /ˈkætɪɡəˌɹaɪz/, industrialize /ɪnˈdʌstɹiəlaɪz/
Cómo practicar con este vídeo
- Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
- Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
- Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como researcher, label, hierarchy.
¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?
Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.