Language and Colour

Abstract

Point of discussion started during colour course At NID with B.Des students. In one of the discussions, it was found that in India different languages have different colour names and different language has slightly different name for same colour. This was discovered when a group discussion was happening on an assignment, collection of colour vocabulary in mother tongue. During the time it was came to my mind that along with the difference in name of a colour, is there any difference in the colour itself also. For example, colour orange is called Narangi, Keshri, etc. In Hindi and in Bengali it is called Kamala, Kusumi and so on. But is Kusumi as colour, different from Narangi or orange? Other way also it can be said that is the word orange produces different visual perception of the colour while pronounced than the word Narangi or Kusumi. Also, as dealing with visual art it was always made me feel that word has connection with visual perception. Prof V. S Ramachandran established the fact that the sound human vocally produces as word has connection with visual form or shape, it could be other way around also, sound of any pronounced word can bring visuals in mind [1]. Prof. Dan Everett argued that language consists of index, icon and symbols with grammar. Now index, icon and symbols are also connected with visual. So, visualization is unavoidable when language comes [2] Also, it was felt that different language creates different visual or multisensory experiences and sensations for the same phenomenon. For example, Bhay (Bengali) creates different visualization than Fear (English). It is also assumed that the language which is been used during zero to five years of human development can give the deeper appeal because, during the age range most of the cognitive development happens, which has lifelong impact [3]. Couple of experiments were conducted to investigate two assumptions, one was ‘name of the same colour in different languages create different visualization of the colour’ and the second one was ‘name of the same colour in mother tongue creates different visualization than foreign language. Experiments were conducted during the colour course with B. Des and M.Des Students. The paper is about relation in between language and visualization, particularly language and colour.