Paul Kay was an anthropology graduate student at Harvard University. When he arrived in Tahiti in 1959, he expected that he would have a difficult time learning the local words for colors.
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Kay was surprised, however, to find it easy to understand colors in Tahitian, which had fewer color terms than English.
For example, only one word, ninamu, translated to both green and blue (now known as grue). But most Tahitian colors mapped astonishingly well to categories that Kay already knew intuitively, including white, black, red, and yellow.
This struck Kay as odd, as the groupings were not more random. This would lead into a more detailed research along with his fellow anthropologist, Brent Berlin.
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(Image Credit: jarmoluk/ Pixabay)
Source: neatorama