Daffodil Vs. Yellow

As part of my own language learning, I have been investigating the color words in Swahili. I couldn’t find some of them in the dictionary. I questioned my tutor about this and it let to a rather interesting conversation. After she defined the some terms that I wanted and were easy to name; then, we came to colors like pink, purple, orange, brown, and maroon. I discovered that Swahili traditionally doesn’t have words for these colors and several others. They are borrowed from other languages – English, Arabic, and German – mainly. She said that orange is frequently referred to as “color of the fruit (oranges)”; it is translated basically in that phrase. Pink is pinki, brown is the color of coffee, and my favorite amusing term, maroon, is damu na mzee, literally the blood of old people. The color universals that I discussed in anthropology last semester are true here. There are definite words for red, black, and white. The rest of the color words vary within Swahili and the tribal languages, if they exist at all.

Having done graphic design at home, I’ve learned to distinguish the slightest differences in colors. To my eye, there is a difference between aqua and pool as well as tangerine and orange zest. Looking at fabrics in the market, I take those color terms with me. I see khaki and mocha kitenges with turquoise and lime accents. If you asked the shop keeper to name those colors you would hear, brown, blue and green. My eye can see those differences and I know physiologically an eye is an eye unless it’s been damaged. Does knowledge of color activate more rods and cones in the eye or is it awareness to those subtle differences?

The story my tutor shared with us to illustrate the lack of color words is quite humorous and it goes a something like this: “My sister got married last year. It was my responsibility to buy all of the flowers and the decorations. She told me her wedding colors were pink and white and that the bridesmaids dresses were pink, so I bought pink everything. Since she lives far away, she didn’t see anything until I came a few days before the wedding with the things I had purchased. I bought pink like the kind on roses or baby blankets. The dresses were maroon. We used what we had, though when I think about it until a few years ago I would have called maroon pink as well because I hadn’t learned a word for that color.”

This leads me to the thought that many of the words I use to describe colors are a product of wealth. Why else would I need to know the difference in the names between three different shades of blue unless I had time to think about it or use those terms in home decorating or design?

I’d love to take a rural Tanzanian into Home Depot to look at all of the paint chips and samples. I’d have to ask what colors he/she saw. Then, upon this individual’s return home, if he/she started seeing colors differently since new color words were added to the vocabulary and an opportunity was given to see distinctions labeled in color difference.