A Kind of Blue1此蓝非彼蓝

Environments can affect language—just not in the way you may think.

环境影响语言，但如何影响却非你所想。

Everyone knows the Eskimos have dozens， if not hundreds， of words for snow because of their intimate knowledge of their environment. Except that everyone cannot “know” this， because knowledge requires a statement to be true. In fact， the Eskimo snow story is a factoid2， a word coined by Norman Mailer3 for a fun， roughly fact-shaped object that is not， in fact， a fact—in the same way a “spheroid” is not quite a sphere.

尽人皆知，爱斯基摩人对其生活的环境非常了解，于是他们就有几十甚至几百个表示“雪”的词。只是并非人人都“了解”其中的缘由，因为了解的前提是陈述必须真实。事实上，爱斯基摩人雪的故事是factoid（仿真陈述）。这个词是诺曼·梅勒创造的，指的是一个有趣的对象，貌似事实，实非事实——就像“球状体”不完全是球体一样。

The Eskimos （or Inuit4， as most prefer to be called） don’t really have hundreds of words for snow because of their fine sense of its variety. Rather， they have a virtually infinite supply of words for everything， because of the nature of their languages. Inuit languages allow lexical roots to be strung together to make long， highly specific words， including some that might make an entire sentence in English. “Snow that has turned grey from being walked on repeatedly”， a noun phrase in English， might be a single word in Inuit. But the number of basic snow-related roots is not much larger than the number of snow words in English.

爱斯基摩人（又称因纽特人，他们大多更喜欢这个称呼）有数百种表示“雪”的说法，这其实并不是因为他们能精细感知各种各样的雪。确切地讲，无论说到什么东西，他们几乎都有数不清的词来指代，这是其语言特性使然。因纽特语能把词根串连成表意极为精确的长单词，其中有些用英语说可能得说完整的一句话。比如，在英语中“因反复踩踏而变成灰色的雪”是个名词短语，而在因纽特语中可能只是一个单词。但是，有关“雪”的基本词根个数并不比英语中表示“雪”的单词数多太多。

For many linguists， the Eskimo snow story has become an example of an embarrassing， exoticising fairy tale about an unfamiliar culture， passed round by those who know nothing of it. It is also the paradigmatic5 example of assuming a kind of mystical connection between language， land and culture—which falls apart6 under serious scrutiny.

许多语言学家认为，爱斯基摩人雪的故事俨然就是那种令人尴尬的异域童话，讲的是陌生文化，由一些并不了解这种文化的人散播开来。这还是某种观点的典型表现，即认为语言、地域和文化之间有某种神秘联系——其实这种关联经不起仔细推敲。

Today， efforts to draw links between language and the environment are more respectful. One linguist has observed that languages with certain rare consonants （called ejectives7） are more prevalent at high altitudes， perhaps because those are easier to pronounce in lower air pressure. Another team found that languages which use tones （ie， changes in pitch） in their vowels， to distinguish one word from another， are linked with humid climates. This is purportedly because humidity helps the vocal folds produce the tones. These causal relationships are not always accepted by other scholars.

如今，找出语言与环境之间关联的努力更尊重现实。一位语言学家发现，带有某些罕见辅音（称为挤喉音）的语言在高海拔地区更为普遍，也许是因为气压较低时这些辅音更容易发出来。另一研究团队发现，以元音声调（即音高变化）区分单词的语言与潮湿的气候有联系。据说，这是因为气候潮湿利于声带发出各种声调。上述因果关系并非总是得到其他学者的认同。

Recently， though， a large study of colour words around the world has found a clear link between geography and vocabulary. Colour is a classic case of a spectrum. There is no sharp break8 between， say， blue and teal9， and cultures divide the continuum10 in different ways. Some languages have just two colour-related words， for light and dark. A pair of linguists， Brent Berlin and Paul Kay11， wrote in the 1960s that if they have a third， it is almost always for red; a fourth and fifth are usually for green and yellow.

然而，最近有一项针对世界各地颜色词的大型研究发现，地理环境和词汇有着明确关联。颜色是谱系的一个经典案例。比如，蓝色和绿蓝色无明显差别，不同文化对这种渐变色彩的区分方式各异。有些语言只有两个词与颜色有关，分别代表浅色和深色。布伦特·伯林和保罗·凯这两位语言学家在1960年代著书指出，语言中若有第三个颜色词，那往往是红色；若有第四个和第五个词，那一般是绿色和黄色。

Blue comes only sixth in the Berlin-Kay schema12， elementary as it may seem. Besides the sky and sea， though， there are few blue things in nature， which may make the word less necessary; rarely does anyone say “look for a blue plant”， because these are uncommon. Many languages lump together blue and green， a chunk of the spectrum linguists call “grue”13.

根据柏林-凯的纲要，蓝色仅位列第六，尽管它似乎是基础色。然而，除了天空和海洋，自然界中几乎没有蓝色的东西，这使得蓝色这个词也就不怎么有用。很少有人说“寻找一种蓝色的植物”，因为蓝色植物很少见。许多语言把蓝色和绿色混为一谈，语言学家称色谱中的这一区域为“绿蓝色”。

The new study breaks ground by finding that there is indeed a link between the use of grue words and the environment， specifically sunshine. Populations exposed to lots of sunlight are more likely to talk about “grue”， note Mathilde Josserand， Emma Meeussen， Asifa Majid and Dan Dediu14. One possible reason is that long-term exposure to ultraviolet light can cause changes in the retina that make it more difficult to distinguish blue from green.

此项新研究取得了突破，它发现表示绿蓝色的词，其使用与环境（具体指阳光）确有联系。玛蒂尔德·若斯朗、埃玛·梅乌森、阿西法·马吉德和丹·德迪乌指出，生活环境阳光充足的族群更有可能谈及“绿蓝色”。其中一个可能的原因是，长期接受紫外线照射，视网膜会发生种种变化，分辨绿色和蓝色愈加困难。

The researchers tested a host of other theories to account for the presence of a “grue” term， and found a weaker but still interesting link to culture， rather than physiology. They discovered that larger populations were more likely to have a distinct “blue”. Population size， they speculate， is a reasonable proxy15 for cultural complexity—the kind， for instance， that would lead cultures to develop dyeing techniques， and thus create artificially blue objects.

研究人员对其他许多理论做了检验，以解释表示“绿蓝色”的词存在的原因，他们找到了这些词的产生和文化之间的联系，尽管弱于同生理机能之间的联系，但依然值得关注。研究人员发现，人口规模越大，出现单独表示“蓝色”的词的可能性就越大。他们推测，人口规模是文化复杂性的可靠指标，比如说，这种复杂性会导致文化群体改进染色技术，进而造出人造蓝色的物品。