Further Evidence for Arabic Basic Colour Categories

Abdulrahman S. Al-rasheed^*

Departments of Psychology, King Saud University, Riyadh, KSA.

DOI: 10.4236/psych.2014.515179                

Abstract

The aim of this study was to describe the basic colour terms (BCTs) of Arabic and, in particular, clarify the relationship among the three Arabic terms for blue: azrock, samawee, and khuhlie that suggested a BCTs in Arabic language in Al-rasheed et al. (2013). Data were collected from adult native Arabic speakers (30 male and 27 female) age between 18 and 34 years old, with a mean age of 21.67 years (SD = 2.98). All were under and postgraduate students at King Saud University. Participants task was to group the 320 colours by similarity. Based on this result, Arabic probably has eleven basic colour terms and these correspond with Berlin and Kay’s eleven universal categories. The terms are that ahmar “red”, akhdar “green”, asfer, “yellow”, azrock “blue”, asswed “black”, abiyadh “white”, banafsagee “purple”, boartoogaalee “orange”, bonee “brown”, wardee “pink” and rassasee. In addition, the terms of particular interest—samawee (“light blue”) had the next highest claim to being basic and may deserve further investigating.

Keywords

Basic Colour Terms, Colour Categorisation, Universal Categories, Berlin and Kay’s Theory, Arabic Language

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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