Berlin and Kay’s Theory of Color Universals and Linguistic Relativity: The Case of Arabic

Abdulrahman Saud Al-rasheed¹, Norah S. Al-Mohimeed¹, Ian R. L. Davies² 
(1. Department of Psychology, University of King Saud, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia;
2. Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guilford, United Kingdom)

Abstract: The aims of this study were to describe the basic color terms (BCTs) of Arabic and, in particular, clarify the relationship among the three Arabic terms for blue: azrock, samawee, and khuhlie. Data were collected from child and adult native Arabic speakers from schools and universities in Riyadh using a list task and a naming task. In the list task, the children’s sample included 113 boys and 140 girls, aged 8 to 12 years, while the adult sample (N = 200) was made up of equal numbers of men and women, aged 18 to 25 years (mean = 20 years). The task involved writing down as many color words as they knew, in four minutes for the children, and one minute for the adults. The pattern of results from the two samples was essentially the same: the terms ordered by their frequency from 100 to 38 percent were ahmar “red”, azrock “blue”, akhdar “green”, asfer “yellow”, asswed “black”, abiyadh “white” boartoogaalee “orange”, bonee “brown”, wardee “pink”, banafsagee “purple”, and rassasee “grey”. In addition, samawee “light blue” was provided by 40 percent of the sample. This is followed by a drop in the frequency scores, with khuhlie “dark blue” being included in 38.6 percent of the responses. In regard to the color naming task, the child sample included 30 boys and 30 girls, aged 8 to 12 years, while the adult sample (N = 60) include equal numbers of men and women, aged 18 to 28 years. The task involved naming each example of a set of 65 colors representing the whole color palette. The two samples again performed similarly. The terms with the highest measures of usage and consensus were ahmar, azrock, akhdar, asfer, asswed, abiyadh, boartoogaalee, bonee, wardee, banafsagee, and rassasee. Based on these results, it appears that Arabic has 11 basic color terms that correspond to Berlin and Kay’s (1969) universal terms. In addition, the terms of particular interest — samawee (“light blue”) and khuhlie (“dark blue”) — are not basic Arabic color terms.

Key words: Basic color terms, basic category, color words, salient terms