Stanlaw (1987) examined how English loanwords are incorporated into Japanese color vocabulary. He suggested that not only are a number of English color terms commonly used in Japanese, but that English loanwords are apparently replacing native Japanese basic color terms in a "reverse 'evolutionary' order" (p. 18), that is, beginning with the categories PINK, ORANGE, and GREY. Shim (1994) makes an even stronger claim concerning the use of English color terms in Korean. She suggests that even the most basic Korean color words are being replaced in the speech of younger Koreans by English loanwords (e.g., hwaithu 'white', pullayk 'black', yeyllo 'yellow', leytu 'red', pullwu 'blue', and kulin 'green'), stating that at the present time, "There seems to be almost equal competition among pure Korean words, Chinese loanwords, and English loanwords . . ." (p. 232).
        This paper, based on data from the author's doctoral dissertation (Tyson, 1994), looks closely at the influence of contact with English on the Korean color naming system. The major data for the study were elicited from forty-four native speakers of Korean living in Seoul ranging in age from 18 to 85 using Munsell color samples as stimulus materials. In a three-part formal interview procedure based on the work of MacLaury (1986, 1991, 1992), each person was asked to: (1) name 330 different loose color chips to determine that person's individual vocabulary of color terms; (2) choose a "focus" for each term from an array of the same color chips; and (3) "map" the range of each term on the array. These data were supplemented by questionnaires, informal interviews, and other ethnographically-oriented information.
        As expected, consultants used a large number of English loanwords during the interviews. It was found, however, that English loanwords seem to have had a major semantic impact so far in only two Korean "basic" color categories (cf. Berlin & Kay, 1969; Kay, 1975; Kay & McDaniel, 1978)--ORANGE and PINK--and that there were wide individual variations in the terms used in those categories. Some speakers, for instance, used only one term to name chips in each of the two categories, while others used several terms for ORANGE (including cwuhwang, cwuhong, and the English loanword oleynci) and two terms for PINK (punhong and the English loanword phingkhu). Some seemed to be using one or both of the English loanwords as their most "basic" terms for ORANGE and/or PINK, while others used no English loanwords at all to name chips in those categories. Consultants who did use the loanwords, however, were overwhelmingly likely to make a semantic distinction between the loanwords and their Korean counterparts, and in general, naming ranges, mapping ranges, and foci of English loanwords tended to be brighter than those of Korean words in the same categories. In other words, there is evidence that English loanwords have influenced color naming and color categorization in Korean, but the influence is not nearly as extensive as claimed by Shim (1994), nor are the results as clear cut as the influence on Japanese claimed by Stanlaw (1987). It is further suggested that the results of this study may have implications for the study of the impact of language contact in other semantic fields which are not as easily measured as color.
 
 

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Kay, P. (1975). Synchronic variability and diachronic change in basic color terms. Language in Society, 4, 257-270.

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Stanlaw, J. M. (1987). Color, culture, and contact: English loanwords and problems of color nomenclature in modern Japanese. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Tyson, R. E. (1994). Korean color naming and Korean-English language contact: A study in linguistic variation and semantic change. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson.