Pratique du Shadowing: The surprising pattern behind color names around the world - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec la vidéo
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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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Vocabulaire et conseils d’expression pour cette leçon
Cette leçon d’expression orale s’appuie sur la vidéo « The surprising pattern behind color names around the world ». Les mots qui reviennent le plus souvent : color, language, word, blue, term. Cette vidéo contient 66 phrases et 1058 mots à répéter en shadowing. La partie parlée dure 6:22. Le locuteur parle à un rythme naturel d’environ 166 mots par minute, proche d’une conversation courante. Seuls 79 % des mots font partie des 3 000 mots les plus courants en anglais, le vocabulaire est donc exigeant.
Vocabulaire clé de cette vidéo
15 mots de la vidéo à retenir, avec leur prononciation et leur sens :
| Mot | Prononciation | Sens |
|---|---|---|
| researcher nom | /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/ | chercheur, chercheuse |
| label nom | /ˈleɪ.bəl/ | étiquette, libellé |
| hierarchy nom | /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/ | hiérarchie |
| purple nom | /ˈpɝ.pl̩/ | violet, pourpre |
| chip nom | /t͡ʃɪp/ | brisure, fragment |
| spectrum nom | /ˈspɛktɹəm/ | spectre |
| universal adjectif | /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/ | universel |
| investigate verbe | /ɪnˈvɛs.tə.ɡeɪt/ | étudier |
| expedition nom | /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/ | expédition |
| critic nom | /ˈkɹɪt.ɪk/ | critique |
| simulation nom | /ˌsɪm.jəˈleɪ.ʃn̩/ | simulation |
| evolve verbe | /ɪˈvɑlv/ | élaborer |
| tone nom | /ˈtəʊn/ | ton |
| everyday adjectif | /ˈɛvɹiˌdeɪ/ | usuel |
| cloud nom | /ˈklaʊ̯d/ | nuage |
Les verbes à particule que vous entendrez
| Mot | Sens |
|---|---|
| check out verbe | mater, regarder |
| point out verbe | pointer |
| turn out verbe | se finir, se terminer |
La grammaire de cette vidéo
Les structures que le locuteur utilise le plus, avec les mots exacts de la vidéo :
| Structure | Dans la vidéo |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + participe passé — une action passée qui compte encore maintenant | have found · have speculated · have explored |
| Voix passive be + participe passé — l’accent est mis sur ce qui arrive, pas sur qui le fait | was struck · are labeled |
| Propositions relatives who / which + proposition — une précision sur une personne ou une chose | people who spoke · averages, which are |
Prononciation à surveiller
Le locuteur utilise 7 contractions et formes réduites, comme didn't, weren't, don't. Prononcez-les sous leur forme courte, telles que vous les entendez.
- Les sons « sh » et « zh »: expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, simulation /ˌsɪm.jəˈleɪ.ʃn̩/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, translation /tɹænzˈleɪʃən/, artificial /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/
- Mots longs — placez bien l’accent: hierarchy /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/, universal /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/, investigate /ɪnˈvɛs.tə.ɡeɪt/, expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/
Les sons difficiles pour les francophones :
- /h/ — il se souffle, il n’est pas muet: hierarchy /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/, hint /hɪnt/
- /tʃ/ et /dʒ/ — à ne pas adoucir en « ch » et « j »: researcher /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/, chip /t͡ʃɪp/, intellectual /ˌɪntəˈlɛkt͡ʃʊəl/, emerge /ɪˈmɝd͡ʒ/, anthropologist /ˌæn.θɹoʊˈpɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/
- /r/ anglais — langue recourbée, sans frotter la gorge: researcher /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/, hierarchy /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/, spectrum /ˈspɛktɹəm/, universal /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/, critic /ˈkɹɪt.ɪk/
Comment s’entraîner avec cette vidéo
- Écoutez la vidéo en entier une fois sans parler et notez les mots que vous ne connaissez pas.
- Commencez à la vitesse 0,75×, répétez phrase par phrase, puis revenez à la vitesse normale quand cela devient facile.
- Enregistrez-vous et comparez avec l’original, en faisant attention à des mots comme researcher, label, hierarchy.
Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?
Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.