That, and so many other smaller incidents in my life, made me realize that language, even more than color, defines who you are to people. I

I became a chameleon. My color didn't change, but I could change your perception of my color. If you spoke Zulu, I replied to you in Zulu. If you spoke to me in Tswana, I replied to you in Tswana. Maybe I didn't look like you, but if I spoke like you, I was you.

Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.

We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.

We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the color of our moral character from those who are around us.

Language brings with it an identity and a culture, or at least the perception of it. A shared language says, 'We're the same.' A language barrier says, 'We're different.' .... The great thing about language is that you can just as easily use it to do the opposite, convince people that they are the same. Racism teaches us that we are different because of the color of our skin, but because racism is stupid, it's easily tricked. If you're a racist and you meet someone who doesn't look like you, the fact that he can't speak like you reinforces your racist preconceptions. He's different, less intelligent. A brilliant scientist can come over the border from Mexico to live in America, but if he speaks in broken English, people say, 'Hey, I don't trust this guy.' 'But he's a scientist.' 'Yeah, in Mexican science maybe. I don't trust him.' However, if the person who doesn't look like you speaks like you, your brain short-circuits because your racism program has none of those instructions in the code. 'Wait, wait,' your mind says, 'The racism code says if he doesn't look like me, he isn't like me, but the language code says if he speaks like me, he is like me. Something is off here. I can't figure this out.

It struck Lacy that she didn’t really know what color a chameleon was before it started changing.

They believe, whether they are coming from the far left or far right, that someone's colour should define who they are - or their background, their faith, or something, that characteristic, rather than the content of their character.

When you are in the company of lunatics, behave like a lunatic. When you are in the company of intelligentsias, speak with brilliance...that is how a chameleon behaves, the territory changes it, and it adapts to the changes.

People are chameleons, and you adapt to your surroundings. If you're not willing to put the right people around you or stick to the right group of friends or keep the right influences around you, it makes everything more difficult.

Life, he says, is like the chameleon, changing colour all the time.

So they had language, and they had fire, and they had society. And about then she found an adjustment being made in her mind, as the word creatures became the word people. These beings weren’t human, but they were people, she told herself; it’s not them, they’re us.

The colors that a speaker "sees" often depend very much on the language he speaks, because each language offers its own high-codability color terms.

Language was like clothes; it could be a help to one, or it could give one away. But the most important thing was that one should not pretend to be what one was not.