Blue–green distinction in language

The English language makes a distinction between blue and green, but some languages do not. Of these, quite a number, mostly in Africa, do not distinguish blue from black either, while there are a handful of languages that do not distinguish blue from black but have a separate term for green. Also, some languages treat light (often greenish) blue and dark blue as separate colors, rather than different variations of blue, while English does not.

According to Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's 1969 study Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, distinct terms for brown, purple, pink, orange and grey will not emerge in a language until the language has made a distinction between green and blue. In their account of the development of color terms the first terms to emerge are those for white/black (or light/dark), red and green/yellow.

Many languages do not have separate terms for blue and green, instead using a cover term for both (when the issue is discussed in linguistics, this cover term is sometimes called grue in English). For example, in Vietnamese both tree leaves and the sky are xanh (to distinguish, one may use xanh lá cây "leaf grue" for green and xanh dương "ocean grue" for blue). In the Thai language, เขียว (khiaw) means green except when referring to the sky or the sea, when it means blue; เขียวชอุ่ม (khiaw cha-um), เขียวขจี (khiaw khachi), and เขียวแปร๊ด (khiaw praed) have all meant either intense blue or garish green, although the latter is becoming more usual as the language 'learns' to distinguish blue and green. Chinese has a word 青 (qīng) that can refer to both, though it also has separate words for blue (蓝 / 藍, lán) and green (绿 / 綠, lǜ). The Korean word 푸르다 (pureuda) can mean either green or blue. In Japanese, the word for blue (青 ao) is often used for colors that English speakers would refer to as green, such as the color of a traffic signal meaning "go". Some Nguni languages of southern Africa, including Tswana utilize the same word for blue and green.

In traditional Welsh (and related Celtic languages), glas could refer to blue but also to certain shades of green and grey; however, modern Welsh is tending toward the 11-color Western scheme, restricting glas to blue and using gwyrdd for green and llwyd for grey. Similarly, in Irish, glas can mean various shades of green and grey (like the sea), while liath is grey proper (like a horse), and the term for blue proper is gorm (like the sky or Cairngorm mountains), although gorm can also in some contexts mean black — sub-Saharan black people would be referred to as daoine gorma, or blue people. In Old Norse the word blár was also used to describe black (and the common word for people of African descent was thus blámenn 'blue/black men'). In Swedish, blå, the modern word for blue, was used this way until the early 20th century.

Arabic

In Arabic the word for blue is generally أزرق azraq. The Arabic word for green is أخضر akhḍar. However, the color of the sky is sometimes referred to as "green" in Classical Arabic poetry, in which الخضراء al-khaḍrā’, the feminine form of akhḍar (because the Arabic word for sky, سماء samā’ is feminine), literally 'the green one', is an epithet for the sky. But الزرقاء al-zarqā’ (feminine form of azraq, literally 'the blue one') is used as an epithet for the sky as well.

In Sudan, it is considered polite not to use the word for black, aswad, to refer to people's skin color. Instead, darker-skinned Arabs are called akhḍar 'green', while black Arabs and Africans are called azraq 'blue', as part of a seven-tier scheme for distinguishing skin tones that also includes "white," "yellow," "red," "brown," while "black" has derogatory connotations in Sudanese society. More commonly, the term "asmar" is used to describe males with dark skin. The female equivalent is "samra'".

American Sign Language

In American Sign Language, blue and green are separate terms. However, both are considered to be loan signs from English since their handshape forms mirror their English versions. Blue is signed with a B handshape, while green is signed with a G handshape. Both signs use the same movement and location.

Basque

Historically, the Basque language did not distinguish between "blue", "green", and "gray", using the term urdin to cover all three. However, present day usage is to reserve the word urdin for "blue", with borrowings from Castillian Spanish making up the other two terms (berde from Spanish "verde", green, and gris from Spanish "gris", gray).

Bulgarian

Bulgarian, a South Slavic language, makes a clear distinction between blue (синьо, sinyo), green (зелено, zeleno) and black (черно, cherno).

Celtic languages

The boundaries between blue and green are not the same in Welsh and English. The word glas is usually translated as "blue". It can also refer, variously, to the color of the sea, of grass, or of silver. The word gwyrdd is the standard translation for "green".

Glas (same spelling) is, comparably, the translation for "green" in Irish and Breton, with specific reference to plant hues of green; other shades would be referred to in Modern Irish as uaine or uaithne. In Middle Irish and Old Irish, glas was a blanket term for colors ranging from green to blue to various shades of grey (i.e. the glas of a sword, the glas of stone, etc.).

In Modern Irish the word for "blue" is gorm – a borrowing of the Early Welsh word gwrm, now obsolete, meaning "dark blue" or "dusky". A relic of the original meaning ("dusky") survives in the Irish term daoine gorm, meaning "Black people".

Contemporary Scottish Gaelic distinguishes between blue and green with the terms gorm and uaine, respectively. However, the dividing line between the two colors is somewhat different from English, with uaine signifying a light green or yellow-green. The word gorm extends from dark blue (what in English might be Navy blue) to include the dark green or blue-green of vegetation. Grass, for instance, is gorm, rather than uaine.

Chinese

The modern Chinese language has the blue-green distinction (蓝/ 藍 lán for blue and 绿 / 緑 lǜ for green); however, another word which predates the modern vernacular, qīng (Chinese: 青), is also used. It can refer to either blue or green, or even (though much less frequently) to black, as in xuánqīng (Chinese: 玄青 where Chinese: 玄 refers to black). For example, the Flag of the Republic of China is today still referred to as qīng tiān, bái rì, mǎn dì hóng ("Blue Sky, White Sun, Whole Ground Red" — Chinese: 青天，白日，满地红); whereas qīng cài (Chinese: 青菜) is the Chinese word for "green vegetable". Qīng 青 was the traditional designation of both blue and green for much of the history of the Chinese language, while 蓝 lán and 绿 lǜ were introduced relatively more recently, as a part of the adoption of modern Vernacular Chinese as the social norm, replacing Classical Chinese.

Filipino (Tagalog)

Speakers of Tagalog most commonly use the borrowed Spanish words for blue and green - asul (from Spanish azul) and berde (from Spanish verde), respectively. Although these words are much more common in spoken use, the Tagalog language has native terms for these, as well: bughaw for blue and lunti(an) for green, which are often used in literature, music and poetry.

An adult joke that would be referred to as a "blue joke" in English is called a "green joke" in Tagalog, as it's called in other Hispanic countries ("chiste verde").

Finnish

Finnish makes a distinction between vihreä (green) and sininen (blue). Turquoise or teal (turkoosi or sinivihreä) is considered to be a separate, intermediate, color between green and blue, and black (musta) is also differentiated from blue.

The name for color blue, sininen is shared with other Baltic-Finnic languages and is thus dated to the era of the Proto-Baltic-Finnic language (ca. 5000 years old). However, it is also shared with the unrelated language Russian (синий, siniy), suggesting that it is a loanword. (Alternatively, the Russian word синий could represent Finnic substratum). The word vihreä (viher-, archaic viheriä, viheriäinen) is related to vehreä "verdant" and vihanta "green", and viha "hate", originally "poison". It is not shared with Estonian, in which it is roheline, probably related with the Estonian word rohi "grass". However, the form viha does have correspondences in related languages as far as Permic languages, where it means not only poison but "bile" or "green or yellow". It has been originally loaned from an Indo-Iranian protolanguage and is related to Latin virus "poison". Furthermore, the word musta "black" is also of Baltic-Finnic origin.

French and Dutch

French and Dutch distinguish blue (bleu and blauw, respectively) and green (vert and groen). There are terms for light blue (bleu ciel and hemelsblauw, literally 'sky blue') and darker shades of blue (bleu foncé and donkerblauw). Turquoise and azur/azuur can be used to refine the shade's description (e.g. bleu turquoise and turquoise, respectively, often used to refer to pristine tropical waters) or alone. In French, one can also use the term bleu-vert to describe a greenish shade of blue, similar or identical to turquoise, in Dutch this is blauwgroen.

Further distinctions, more generally in Flemish Dutch, are also possible as appelblauwzeegroen which describes a specific mix between green and blue pretty close to turquoise. This mix between green and blue could be translated to the conjuncture 'apple-blue-sea-green'.

In comparison, the color rouge in French is not the same as red in English. In English red covers a wide variety of colors that contain red except the color pink, but orange remains a very solid color without a wide spectrum unlike its counterpart red. However in French, orange has a very wide spectrum of colors while red is very solid with a short spectrum of colors. For example, in English the color of hair may be considered red but in French it is considered roux which is a shade of orange, unless it is solid unnatural red.

German

German distinguishes blue (Blau) and green (Grün) very similar to English. There are terms for light blue (Himmelblau, literally 'sky blue') and darker shades of blue (Dunkelblau). Note that in German all nouns are capitalized, therefore color names are written with a capital letter when referred to as an object, but with a lowercase letter when used as an adjective. In addition, adjective forms of most traditional color names are inflected to match the corresponding noun's case and gender. A number of "modern" color names (such as rosa, meaning 'pink' or 'rose') are not inflected; instead, it is necessary to add the suffix farben or farbig, and inflect the result (for example: ein rosafarbenes Auto, meaning 'a pink car').

Greek

In the Greek language, there are different names for light and dark blues/greens:

1. γαλάζιο (galázio) for light blue
2. θαλασσί (thalassí, 'sea colored') for sea blue
3. κυανό (kyanó) for azure
4. ουρανί (ouraní 'sky colored') for sky blue
5. μπλε (ble <French bleu) for blue
6. παγωνί (pagoní) for green-blue
7. τυρκουάζ (tyrkouáz) for turquoise
8. αμυγδαλί (amygdalí 'almond colored') for light green
9. κυπαρισσί (kyparissí 'cypress colored') for dark green
10. λαχανί (lachaní 'cabbage colored') for lime green
11. πράσινο (prásino) for green
12. φουντουκί (fountoukí 'hazelnut colored') (αθασί, athasí in Cyprus) for light green

and many others such as λαδί (ladí) for olive and χακί (chakí) for khaki.

Also βιολέ (violé) / βιολετί (violetí) for violet blue (which is, however, usually considered as a shade of purple, rather than blue).

As a rule, though, all color names from 1 to 7 are accepted as shades of blue, and 8 to 12 as shades of green; the separate names exist mostly to distinguish between different shades, rather than between different colors.

Hebrew

In Hebrew, the word "כחול" (pronounced /kaˈχol/) means blue, while "ירוק" (pronounced /jaˈʁok/) means green.

Like Russian and Italian, Hebrew has a separate name for light blue (תכלת, "t'chelet") - the color of the sky and of fringes on the ritual garment Tzitzit.

Hindi

Hindi distinguishes blue (neela) and green (hara). Words for light blue are considered to be a shade of blue.

Hungarian

Hungarian makes the distinction between green (zöld) and blue (kék), and also distinguishes black (fekete). Intermediate colors between green and blue are commonly referred to as zöldeskék (literally greenish-blue) or kékeszöld (bluish-green), but names for specific colors in this continuum - like turquoise (türkiz) - also exist. Particular shades of a color can also have separate names, such as azure (azúr).

Italian

Italian distinguishes blue (blu) and green (verde). There are also two words for light blue (e.g. sky's color): azzurro and celeste. Azzurro, the English equivalent of "Royal Blue", is not considered to be a shade of "blu," a darker, navy blue. Celeste literally means '(the color) of the sky' and is used as synonym of azzurro. . To indicate a mix of green and celeste Italians say verde acqua, literally water green.

Japanese

The Japanese word ao (青, n., aoi (青い, adj.)), exactly the same kanji character as the Chinese qīng above, can refer to either blue or green depending on the situation. Modern Japanese has also adopted the Chinese word for green (緑, midori), although this was not always so. Ancient Japanese did not have this distinction: the word midori only came into use in the Heian period, and at that time (and for a long time thereafter) midori was still considered a shade of ao. Educational materials distinguishing green and blue only came into use after World War II, during the Occupation: thus, even though most Japanese consider them to be green, the word ao is still used to describe certain vegetables, apples and vegetation. Ao is also the name for the color of a traffic light, which is bluer than in English-speaking countries. However, most other objects—a green car, a green sweater, and so forth—will generally be called midori. Japanese people also sometimes use the word guriin (グリーン), based on the English word "green", for colors. The language also has several other words meaning specific shades of green and blue.

Kazakh

The Kazakh language, like many Turkic languages, distinguishes between kök as the word for the color of the sky, the sea, and green plants, and jasâl as the color for man-made green things.

Korean

The native Korean word 푸르다 (Revised Romanization: pureu-da adj.) may mean either blue or green, or bluish green. This word 푸르다 is used as in 푸른 하늘 (pureun haneul, blue sky) for blue or as in 푸른 숲 (pureun sup, green forest) for green. Distinct words for blue and green are also used; 파란 (paran adj.), 파란색/파랑 (paransaek/parang n.) for blue, 초록 (chorok adj./n.), 초록색 (choroksaek n. or for short, 녹색 noksaek n.) for green. However, in the case of a traffic light, paran is used for the green light meaning go, even though the word is typically used to mean blue. Cheong 청 is also used for both blue and green. It is a loan from Chinese (靑, pinyin: qing) and is used in the proper name Cheong Wa Dae (청와대 or Hanja: 靑瓦臺), the Blue House, which is the executive office and official residence of the President of the Republic of Korea.

Kurdish

In Kurdish the word "şîn" (pronounced sheen), meaning "blue", is used for green things in nature like leaves, grass, and eyes. However, there is another word, "kesk", which is used for other green things, for instance in the Kurdish flag.

Lakota Sioux

In the Lakota Sioux language, the word tĥo is used for both blue and green.

Latvian

There are separate words for green (zaļš) and blue (zils) in Latvian. Both zils and zaļš stem from the same Proto-Indo-European word for yellow (*ghel). Several other words in Latvian have been derived from these colors, namely grass is called zāle (from zaļš), while the name for iris is zīlīte (from zils).

The now archaic word mēļš was used to describe both dark blue and black (probably indicating that previously zils was used only for lighter shades of blue). For instance, blueberries are called mellenes.

Maya

Single words for blue/green are also found in Mayan languages; for example in the Yukatek Maya language blue/green is yax.

Mongolian

In Mongolian, the word for green is ногоон (nogoon). Mongolian distinguishes between dark and light blue. The word for light blue is цэнхэр (tsenher) and the word for dark blue is хѳх (höh).

Pashto

Pashto uses the word, shīn, to denote blue as well as green. Shinkay, a word derived from shīn, means 'greenery' but shīn āsmān means 'blue sky'. When there is ambiguity, it is common to ask (as in Vietnamese), "Shīn like the sky? Or shīn like plants?"

Persian

Persian words for blue include آبى ābi (literally the color of water, from āb 'water'), for blue generally; نيلى nili (from nil, 'indigo dye'), for deeper shades of blue such as the color of rain clouds; فيروزه fayruzeh 'turquoise stone', used to describe the color of blue eyes; لاجوردى lājvardi or لاژوردى lāzhvardi 'lapis lazuli color', source of the words lazuli and azure; نيلوفرى nilufari 'water lily color'; and كبود kabud, an old literary word for 'blue'.

The Persian word for green is سبز sabz, but this word can also be used for 'black, dark, opaque' as well as for the color of what are called blue eyes in English. As in Sudan, dark-skinned people may be described as "green."

The color of the sky is variously described in Persian poetry using the words sabz, fayruzeh, nil, lājvardi, or nilufari— literally 'green', 'indigo', 'turquoise', 'azure', or 'the color of water lilies'. For example, sabz-ākhor 'green stable', sabz-āshyāneh 'green ceiling', sabz-ayvān 'green balcony', sabz-bādbān 'green sail', sabz-bāgh 'green garden', sabz-farsh 'green carpet', sabz-golshan 'green flower-garden', sabz-kārgāh 'green workshop', sabz-kh^vān 'green table', sabz-manzareh 'green panorama', sabz-maydān 'green field' sabz-pol 'green bridge', sabz-tāq 'green arch', sabz-tasht 'green bowl', and sabz-tā’us 'green peacock' are poetic epithets for the sky—in addition to similar compounds using the words for blue, e.g. lājvardi-saqf 'lapis lazuli colored roof' or fayruzeh-tasht 'turquoise bowl'. Moreover, the words for green of Arabic origin اخضر akhzar and خضرا khazrā are used for epithets of the sky or heaven, such as charkh-e akhzar 'green wheel'.

Polish

In the Polish language, blue (niebieski) and green (zielony) are treated as separate colors. The word for sky blue or azure—błękitny—might be considered either a basic color or a shade of blue by different speakers. Similarly dark blue or navy (granatowy — deriving from the name of pomegranate (granat), some cultivars of which are dark purplish blue in color) can be considered by some speakers as a separate basic color. Black (czarny) is completely distinguished from blue. As in English, Polish distinguishes pink ("różowy") from red ("czerwony").

The word siwy (possibly a Finnish loanword) means blue-gray in Polish (literally it means the color of gray hair). The word siny refers to violet-blue and is used to describe the color of bruises ("siniaki"), hematoma, and the blue skin discoloration that can result from moderate hypothermia.

Portuguese

In Portuguese, the word "azul" means blue and the word "verde" means green. Furthermore, "azul-claro" means light-blue, and "azul-escuro", means dark-blue. More distinctions can be made between several hues of blue. For instance, "azul-celeste" means sky blue, "azul-marinho" means navy-blue and "azul-turquesa" means turquoise-blue. One can also make the distinction between "verde-claro" and "verde-escuro", meaning light and dark-green respectively, and more distinctions between several qualities of green: for instance, "verde-oliva" means olive-green and "verde-esmeralda" means emerald-green. Cyan is usually called "ciano", but can also be called "verde-água", meaning water green, or "azul-piscina", meaning pool blue.

Romanian

Romanian clearly distinguishes between the colours green (verde) and blue (albastru). It also uses separate words for different hues of the same color, e.g. light blue (bleu), blue (albastru), dark-blue (bleu-marin or bleomarin), along with a word for turquoise (turcoaz) and azure (azur or azuriu).

Russian

Russian does not have a single word referring to the whole range of colors denoted by the English term "blue." Instead, it traditionally treats light blue (голубой, goluboy) as a separate color independent from plain or dark blue (синий, siniy), with all 7 "basic" colors of the spectrum (red - orange - yellow - green - голубой / goluboy (sky blue, light azure, but does not equal cyan) - синий / siniy ('true' deep blue, like synthetic ultramarine) - violet) while in English the light blues like azure and cyan are considered mere shades of "blue" and not different colors. To better understand this, consider that English makes a similar distinction between "red" and light red (pink, which is considered a different color and not merely a kind of red), but such a distinction is unknown in several other languages; for example, both "red" (红 / 紅, hóng) and "pink" (粉红, fěn hóng, lit. "powder red") have traditionally been considered varieties of a single color in Chinese.

Similarly English descriptions of rainbows have often distinguished between blue or turquoise and indigo, the latter of which is often described as dark blue or ultramarine.

Serbian

• Blue: plavo (плаво) indicates any blue
  • Dark blue: modro
  • Navy blue: teget
  • Steel-blue: čelikasto-ugasita† (used in reference to the flag of the Serbian revolution)
  • Light blue: sinja
    • Lighter blue: plavetna† (used in reference to the flag of Montenegro)
• Green: zeleno (зелено)

† Not used in everyday language.

Other shades are presented with a preceding word i.e. tamnoplava.

Blond hair is called plava (blue). Anything that is turquoise is called green. Sometimes blue eyes are also called green eyes.

Spanish

Similarly to French, Romanian, Italian and Portuguese, Spanish distinguishes blue (azul) and green (verde) and has an additional term for the tone of blue visible in the sky, namely "celeste"

Swahili

The Swahili word for blue is buluu, which is derived directly from English and has been in the language for a relatively short time. For other colors, Swahili uses either rangi ya ___ (the color of ___) or a shortened version, -a ___. For example, green is rangi ya kijani or rangi ya majani, which means the color of grass/leaves. Sky blue is rangi ya samawati, or the color of the sky from the Arabic word for sky. (Note: all of these can be written as -a kijani, -a majani, -a samwati etc.)

Tamil

Tamil clearly distinguishes between the colors green (pachai), blue (neelam) and black (karuppu). There are no separate words for different hues of a color.

Tupian languages

Tupian languages did not originally differ between the two colors, though they may now as a result of interference of Spanish (in the case of Guaraní) or Portuguese (in the case of Nheengatu). The Tupi word obý ([oβɨ]) meant both as does the Guarani hovy (ɦɔvɨ).

Turkish

Turkish treats dark or navy blue (lacivert, from the same root as English azure and lapis lazuli) ,(from Persian) as a separate color from plain or light blue (mavi). Mavi is derived from the Arabic word مائي mā’ī 'like water' (ماء mā’ being the Arabic word for water) and lacivert is derived from Persian lājvard 'lapis lazuli', a semiprecious stone with the color of navy blue. In the pre-Islamic religion of the Turks, blue is the color that represented the east, as opposed to red, as well as the zodiac sign Aquarius (the Water Bearer). A characteristic tone of blue, turquoise, was much used by the Turks for their traditional decorations and jewelry.

In traditional pre-Islamic Turkic culture, both blue and green were represented by the same name "Gok" (sky). The name is still in use in many rural areas. For instance, when mold is formed on cheese, in many regions in Turkey, it is called "gogermek" (turning into the color of gok/sky).

Vietnamese

Vietnamese usually does not use separate words for green and refers to that color using a word that can also refer to blue. In Vietnamese, blue and green are denoted by xanh (is a colloquial rendering of what is otherwise called thanh in Hán tự cognate with 青, as with Chinese and Japanese); blue is specifically described as xanh, as in the womb of the sky (xanh bầu trời) and green as xanh, as in the leaves (xanh lá cây).

Modern Vietnamese occasionally does employ the terms xanh lam and xanh lục (in which the second syllables derive from the Chinese: 蓝 and 绿 as explained further below) for blue and green, respectively.

Yebamasa (Tucano)

The Yebamasa (Rio Piraparana - Vaupés - SE-Colombia) use the term sumese for blue/green. The letter "u" is pronounced like the German "ü". (Fieldword Deltgen/Scheffer in 1977)

Zulu

Zulu uses the word -luhlaza (the prefix changes according to the class of the noun) for blue/green.

See also

• Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution
• Blue / Green / Teal
• Color term
• Color of water
• Grue and bleen are sometimes used to translate from the above-mentioned languages into English.
• Linguistic relativity and the color naming debate
• List of colors
• Semantic field for the concept of the range of words
• Traditional colors of Japan
• Variations of blue
• Variations of green

References

• Hitomi Hirayama (1999). "Green... midori? ao?" (PDF). Pera Pera Penguin. 32. Yomiuri Shimbun.

• • tymological Dictionary of Basque