The World Color Survey

The 1969 publication of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's Basic Color Terms proved explosive and controversial. Contrary to the then-popular doctrine of random language variation, Berlin and Kay's multilingual study of color nomenclature indicated a cross-cultural and almost universal pattern in the selection of colors that received abstract names in each language. The ensuing debate helped reform the views of anthropologists, linguists, and psychologists alike. After four decades in print, Basic Color Terms now has a sequel: in this book, the authors authoritatively extend the original survey, studying 110 additional unwritten languages in detail and in situ. The results are presented with charts showing the overall palette of color terms within each language as well as the levels of agreement among speakers.

Paul Kay is professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Brent Berlin is the Graham Perdue Professor of Anthropology at the University of Georgia. Luisa Maffi is co-founder and Director of Terralingua, an organization that promotes bio-cultural diversity. William R. Merrifield was a member of the Summer Institute of Linguistics and professor at the University of Texas, Dallas. Richard Cook is a researcher with the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus Project in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.