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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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “The surprising pattern behind color names around the world”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: color, language, word, blue, term. This video has 66 sentences and 1058 words to shadow. The speech runs for 6:22. The speaker talks at a natural 166 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 79% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| researcher noun | /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/ | One who researches. |
| label noun | /ˈleɪ.bəl/ | A small ticket or sign giving information about something to which it is attached or intended to be attached. |
| hierarchy noun | /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/ | A body of authoritative officials organized in nested ranks. |
| purple noun | /ˈpɝ.pl̩/ | A colour between red and blue; violet, though often closer to magenta. |
| chip noun | /t͡ʃɪp/ | A small piece broken from a larger piece of solid material. |
| spectrum noun | /ˈspɛktɹəm/ | A range; a continuous, infinite, one-dimensional set, possibly bounded by extremes. |
| universal adjective | /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/ | Of or pertaining to the universe. |
| investigate verb | /ɪnˈvɛs.tə.ɡeɪt/ | To inquire into or study in order to ascertain facts or information. |
| expedition noun | /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/ | A military journey; an enterprise against some enemy or into enemy territory. |
| critic noun | /ˈkɹɪt.ɪk/ | A person who appraises the works of others. |
| simulation noun | /ˌsɪm.jəˈleɪ.ʃn̩/ | Something that simulates a system or environment in order to predict actual behaviour. |
| evolve verb | /ɪˈvɑlv/ | To move (something) in regular procession through a system. |
| tone noun | /ˈtəʊn/ | A specific pitch. |
| everyday adjective | /ˈɛvɹiˌdeɪ/ | Appropriate for ordinary use, rather than for special occasions. |
| cloud noun | /ˈklaʊ̯d/ | A visible mass of water droplets suspended in the air. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| point out verb | To identify among a group of similar subjects, or in a scene where the subject might not be readily seen or noticed, with a gesture of the body. |
| turn out verb | To end up; to result. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have found · have speculated · have explored |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was struck · are labeled |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who spoke · averages, which are |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 7 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, weren't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, simulation /ˌsɪm.jəˈleɪ.ʃn̩/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, translation /tɹænzˈleɪʃən/, artificial /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/
- Long words — get the stress right: hierarchy /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/, universal /ˌjunəˈvɜɹs(ə)l/, investigate /ɪnˈvɛs.tə.ɡeɪt/, expedition /ɛkspəˈdɪʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like researcher, label, hierarchy.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.