Blue–green distinction in language

To render this ambiguous notion in English, linguists use the blend word grue, from green and blue,[1] a term coined by the philosopher Nelson Goodman—with an unrelated meaning—in his 1955 Fact, Fiction, and Forecast to illustrate his "new riddle of induction".

Like Russian and Italian, Hebrew has a separate name for light blue (תכלת, tekhelet)—the color of the sky and of tzitzit on the tallit, a ritual garment.

[8] Modern usage in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma language school is to use okchʋko for blue and okchʋmali for green, with no distinction for brightness.

[citation needed] The language of the Kanien'kehá:ka Nation at Akwesasne is at Stage VII on the Berlin–Kay Scale, and possesses distinct terms for a broad range of spectral and nonspectral colors such as oruía 'blue', óhute 'green', kahúji 'black', karákA 'white', and atakArókwa 'gray'.

The Yebamasa of the Rio Piraparana region in Vaupés Department, southeastern Colombia, use the term sumese for both blue and green in the Barasana-Eduria language.

Although these words are much more common in spoken use, Tagalog has native terms: bugháw for blue and lunti(án) for green, which are seen as archaic and more flowery.

In Cebuano, another major Philippine language, the native words for "blue" and "green" end in the same syllable: pughaw and lunhaw, respectively.

Descriptions of the new Anglocentric "blue" was developed in association with the sky (rangi; e.g. kikorangi and kahurangi), while darker hues are perceived closer to black like pako (variant of pango) and uriuri.

The character depicts the budding of a young plant and it could be understood as "verdant", but the word is used to describe colors ranging from light and yellowish green through deep blue all the way to black, as in xuánqīng (玄青).

Qīng was the traditional designation of both blue and green for much of the history of the Chinese language, while lán originally referred to the dye of the indigo plant.

Historically, Mongolian included greens such as fresh grass in the höh category,[23] and nogoon became a more common term in the modern era.

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

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.

[citation needed] Sinje, cognate to Bulgarian синьо sinyo and Russian синий siniy, is archaic, and denotes blue-gray, usually used to describe dark seas.

The Welsh, Cornish, and Breton word glas is usually translated as 'blue'; however, it can also refer, variously, to the color of the sea, of grass, or of silver (cf.

Perhaps under the influence of English, Modern Welsh is trending toward the 11-color Western scheme, restricting glas to 'blue' and using gwyrdd for 'green', llwyd for 'gray' and brown for 'brown', respectively.

However, the more traditional usage is still heard today in the Welsh word for 'grass' (glaswellt or gwelltglas), and in fossilized expressions such as caseg las 'gray mare', tir glas 'green land', papur llwyd 'brown paper' and even red for 'brown' in siwgwr coch 'brown sugar'.

French, as most Romance languages, makes roughly the same distinctions as English and has a specific term for each of blue ("bleu"), green ("vert") and gray ("gris").

Other basic or common colors by its own right are porpra "purple", groc "yellow", carbassa or taronja "orange", vermell "red", rosa "pink", marró "brown", gris "gray", negre "black" and blanc "white".

There are also common words for light blue (e.g. the color of the cloudless sky): azzurro and celeste, and other for darker shades, e.g. indaco, indigo.

[35] Other similar terms are ceruleo and turchese (turquoise/teal); they are more saturated hues (especially turchese) and differ in context of use: the first is a literary or bureaucratic term (used for example to indicate light green eyes in identity cards); the second is more common in any informal speech, along with the variant turchino (for instance, the fairy of The Adventures of Pinocchio is called fata turchina).

German and Dutch distinguish blue (respectively blau and blauw) and green (grün and groen), very similarly to English.

Those terms changed in Byzantine Greek as seen from the insignia colors of two of Constantinople's rival popular factions: Πράσινοι (Prasinoi, "the Greens") and Bένετοι (Venetoi, "the Blues").

(Blue and green are however distinguished using different words in the eastern parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, due to contact with other languages.)

These examples can be written as -a kijani, -a majani, -a samwati[39] The Himba people use a single word for shades of green and blue: buru.

Uher originally meant "dirty", "still water", or "rusty"; it is used for gray or sienna tones, and more generally for dark colors.

It appears similar to a word found in the Slavic languages (Russian синий siniy), but there is no consensus that there would be a relationship (see Proto-Finnic *sini, Proto-Slavic *siňь).

Before this, only red (punainen) was clearly distinguished by hue, with other colors described in terms of brightness (valkea vs. musta), using non-color adjectives for further specificity.

Hence today, in the standardized Tuvan language, blue and green are named differently, but it led to the following controversies: Nowadays, the "Blue-green distinction" topic is quite forgotten, people are used to the usage of nogoon.

In the pre-Islamic religion of the Turks, blue is the color that represented the east, as well as the zodiac sign Aquarius (the Water Bearer).