In 1969, anthropologist Brent Berlin and linguist Paul Kay controversially proposed that all cultures recognise two basic colour categories – black and white – and that the more highly evolved a culture is, the more colours are represented in its language, up to a maximum of 11. Linguist Annie Mollard-Desfour had never heard of Berlin and Kay when she counted the colours in the French language and got to 11, but she too is convinced that colour perception is culturally defined. She told Laura Spinney how the language of colour reveals fundamental differences in the way humans view the world.
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