Distinguishing blue from green in language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

makes a distinction between blue
Blue
Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal...

and green
Green
Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...

, but some language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

s do not. Of these, quite a number, mostly in Africa

Languages of Africa

There are over 2100 and by some counts over 3000 languages spoken natively in Africa in several major language families:*Afro-Asiatic spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel...

, do not distinguish blue from black

Black

Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light...

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

Brent Berlin

Overton Brent Berlin is an American anthropologist, most noted for his work with linguist Paul Kay on color, Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution .He originally received his Ph.D...

and Paul Kay

Paul Kay

Paul Kay is an emeritus professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, United States. He joined the University in 1966 as a member of the Department of Anthropology, transferring to the Department of Linguistics in 1982 and now working at the International Computer Science...

's 1969 study Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution
Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution
Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution is a book by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay. Berlin and Kay's work proposed that the kinds of basic color terms a culture has, such as black, brown or red, are predictable by the number of color terms the culture has.Berlin and Kay posit seven levels...

, distinct terms for brown

Brown

Brown is a color term, denoting a range of composite colors produced by a mixture of orange, red, rose, or yellow with black or gray. The term is from Old English brún, in origin for any dusky or dark shade of color....

, purple

Purple

Purple is a range of hues of color occurring between red and blue, and is classified as a secondary color as the colors are required to create the shade....

, pink

Pink

Pink is a mixture of red and white. Commonly used for Valentine's Day and Easter, pink is sometimes referred to as "the color of love." The use of the word for the color known today as pink was first recorded in the late 17th century....

, orange

Orange (colour)

The colour orange occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum at a wavelength of about 585–620 nm, and has a hue of 30° in HSV colour space. It is numerically halfway between red and yellow in a gamma-compressed RGB colour space, the expression of which is the RGB colour wheel. The...

and grey

Grey

Grey or gray is an achromatic or neutral color.Complementary colors are defined to mix to grey, either additively or subtractively, and many color models place complements opposite each other in a color wheel. To produce grey in RGB displays, the R, G, and B primary light sources are combined in...

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

White

White is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in nearly equal amounts and with high brightness compared to the surroundings. A white visual stimulation will be void of hue and grayness.White light can be...

/black

Black

Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light...

(or light

Light

Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...

/dark

Dark

Dark commonly refers to darkness, the absence of light.Dark may also refer to:*Evil, sinister or malign*Dark , a term used to describe a broadcasting service that has ceased transmission...

), red

Red

Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...

and green

Green

Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...

/yellow

Yellow

Yellow is the color evoked by light that stimulates both the L and M cone cells of the retina about equally, with no significant stimulation of the S cone cells. Light with a wavelength of 570–590 nm is yellow, as is light with a suitable mixture of red and green...

.

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

Vietnamese language

Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...

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

Thai language

Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...

, (khiaw) means green except when referring to the sky or the sea, when it means blue; (khiaw cha-um), (khiaw khachi), and (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

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

has a word (qīng) that can refer to both, and sometimes black, though it also has separate words for blue ( / , lán), green ( / , lǜ), and black . The Korean

Korean language

Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...

word (pureuda) can mean either green or blue. In Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

, the word for blue ( ao
Ao (color)
Ao is a Japanese color word that includes what English-speakers would call blue and green. For example, in Japan, green traffic lights are described as , and blue skies are described as , as in aozora bunko....

) 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

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, including Tswana

Tswana language

Tswana or Setswana is a language spoken in Southern Africa by about 4.5 million people. It is a Bantu language belonging to the Niger–Congo language family within the Sotho languages branch of Zone S , and is closely related to the Northern- and Southern Sotho languages, as well as the Kgalagadi...

utilize the same word for blue and green.

The exact definition of "blue" and "green" may be complicated by the speakers not primarily distinguishing the hue, but using terms that describe other color components such as saturation and luminosity, or other properties of the object being described. For example, "blue" and "green" might be distinguished, but a single term might be used for both if the color is dark. Furthermore, green might be associated with yellow, and blue with black or gray.

Arabic

In Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

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

Classical Arabic

Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times . It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes...

poetry

Arabic poetry

Arabic poetry is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that. Arabic poetry is categorized into two main types, rhymed, or measured, and prose, with the former greatly preceding the latter...

, 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

Sudan

Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...

, 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'".

Hebrew

In Hebrew, the word "כחול" means blue, while "ירוק" means green.

Like Russian and Italian, Hebrew has a separate name for light blue (תכלת, "t'khelet

Tekhelet

Tekhelet, , Tekheleth, Techelet or Techeiles is a blue dye mentioned 50 times in the Hebrew Bible and translated by the Septuagint as hyakinthinos . Its uses include the clothing of the High Priest, the tapestries in the Tabernacle, and the tassels to be affixed to the corners of one's garments...

") - the color of the sky and of fringes on the ritual garment Tzitzit
Tzitzit
The Hebrew noun tzitzit is the name for specially knotted ritual fringes worn by observant Jews. Tzitzit are attached to the four corners of the tallit and tallit katan.-Etymology:The word may derive from the semitic root N-TZ-H...

.

In modern Hebrew, the word "כתום" is generally used to refer to orange (the color of the fruit), although it is also applied to colors closer to yellow or gold based on its biblical usage as golden.

Baltic

There are separate words for green (zaļš) and blue (zils) in Latvian

Latvian language

Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...

. 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.

Slavic

Bulgarian

Bulgarian language

Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...

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

In the Polish language

Polish language

Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, 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

Pomegranate

The pomegranate , Punica granatum, is a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub or small tree growing between five and eight meters tall.Native to the area of modern day Iran, the pomegranate has been cultivated in the Caucasus since ancient times. From there it spread to Asian areas such as the Caucasus as...

(granat), some cultivar

Cultivar

A cultivar'Cultivar has two meanings as explained under Formal definition. When used in reference to a taxon, the word does not apply to an individual plant but to all those plants sharing the unique characteristics that define the cultivar. is a plant or group of plants selected for desirable...

s 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

Hematoma

A hematoma, or haematoma, is a localized collection of blood outside the blood vessels, usually in liquid form within the tissue. This distinguishes it from an ecchymosis, which is the spread of blood under the skin in a thin layer, commonly called a bruise...

, and the blue skin discoloration that can result from moderate hypothermia

Hypothermia

Hypothermia is a condition in which core temperature drops below the required temperature for normal metabolism and body functions which is defined as . Body temperature is usually maintained near a constant level of through biologic homeostasis or thermoregulation...

.

Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

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 seven "basic" colors of the spectrum (red - orange - yellow - green - голубой / goluboy (sky blue, light azure

Azure

In heraldry, azure is the tincture with the colour blue, and belongs to the class of tinctures called "colours". In engraving, it is sometimes depicted as a region of horizontal lines or else marked with either az. or b. as an abbreviation....

, but does not equal cyan

Cyan

Cyan from , transliterated: kýanos, meaning "dark blue substance") may be used as the name of any of a number of colors in the blue/green range of the spectrum. In reference to the visible spectrum cyan is used to refer to the color obtained by mixing equal amounts of green and blue light or the...

) - синий / siniy ('true' deep blue

Blue

Blue is a colour, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. It is considered one of the additive primary colours. On the HSV Colour Wheel, the complement of blue is yellow; that is, a colour corresponding to an equal...

, like synthetic ultramarine

Ultramarine

Ultramarine is a blue pigment consisting primarily of a double silicate of aluminium and sodium with some sulfides or sulfates, and occurring in nature as a proximate component of lapis lazuli...

) - violet) while in English the light blues like azure

Azure (color)

The color bleu de France is displayed at right.Bleu de France is a color that has been associated in heraldry with the Kings of France since the 12th century.-Brandeis blue:...

and cyan

Cyan

are considered mere shades of "blue" and not different colors. To better understand this, consider that English makes a similar distinction between "red

Red

" and light red (pink

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" ( / , hóng) and "pink" have traditionally been considered varieties of a single color in Chinese

Chinese language

. Russian language as well makes distinction between red (красный, krasniy) and pink (розовый, rozoviy).

Similarly English descriptions of rainbows have often distinguished between blue or turquoise

Turquoise (color)

Turquoise or is a slightly blueish tone of light green. The color is based on the gem turquoise. The term comes from the French for Turkish.At right is displayed the X11 color named turquoise....

and indigo

Indigo

Indigo is a color named after the purple dye derived from the plant Indigofera tinctoria and related species. The color is placed on the electromagnetic spectrum between about 420 and 450 nm in wavelength, placing it between blue and violet...

, the latter of which is often described as dark blue or ultramarine

Ultramarine

Ultramarine is a blue pigment consisting primarily of a double silicate of aluminium and sodium with some sulfides or sulfates, and occurring in nature as a proximate component of lapis lazuli...

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.

Celtic

The boundaries between blue and green are not the same in Welsh

Welsh language

Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

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

Irish language

Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...

and Breton

Breton language

Breton is a Celtic language spoken in Brittany , France. Breton is a Brythonic language, descended from the Celtic British language brought from Great Britain to Armorica by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages. Like the other Brythonic languages, Welsh and Cornish, it is classified as...

, 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 gorma, meaning "Black people

Black people

The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...

".

Contemporary Scottish Gaelic

Scottish Gaelic language

Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language native to Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish, and thus descends ultimately from Primitive Irish....

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. In addition, liath covers a range from light blue to light grey.

In traditional Welsh

Welsh language

Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

(and related Celtic languages

Celtic languages

The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...

), glas could refer to blue but also to certain shades of green and grey

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

Irish language

, glas can mean various shades of green and grey (like the sea), while liath is grey proper (like a stone), 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. Also the boundary between colors varies much more than the "focus point": e.g. a single island is named in Breton Enez glas ("the blue island") and in French l'Ile Verte ("the green island") referring in both cases to the greyish-green color of its bushes, even though both languages distinguish green (as in lawn grass) from blue (as in a cloudless midday sky).

Romance

The Romance terms for "green" (French vert) etc. are all from Latin viridis.
The terms for "blue", on the other hand, vary: French bleu is from Germanic, and was in turn loaned into many other languages, including English.

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, but rather the opposite, i.e. blu is a darker shade of azzurro.
Celeste literally means '(the color) of the sky' and is often used as synonym of azzurro, although it's a lighter color than azzurro.
To indicate a mix of green and celeste Italians say verde acqua, literally water green or acquamarina (aquamarine), or glauco, which is also used to indicate a mix of green and gray in plants.

In Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

, 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

Cyan

is usually called "ciano", but can also be called "verde-água", meaning water green, or "azul-piscina", meaning pool blue.

Romanian

Romanian language

Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

clearly distinguishes between the colors 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).

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", which is nonetheless considered a shade of blue.

Germanic

In Old Norse the word blár was also used to describe black

Black

Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light...

(and the common word for people of African descent was thus blámenn 'blue/black men'). In Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

, blå, the modern word for blue, was used this way until the early 20th century.

German and Dutch distinguish blue (respectively Blau and blauw) and green (Grün and groen) very similar to English. There are terms for light blue (Himmelblau and hemelblauw, literally 'sky blue') and darker shades of blue (Dunkelblau and donkerblauw). Note that in German all nouns are capitalized, therefore color names are written with a capital letter when appearing as a noun, 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, in Standard German, it is necessary to add the suffix farben or farbig (colored), and inflect the result (for example: ein rosafarbenes Auto, lit. 'a pink-colored car'). This, however, is often disregarded in colloquial speech, resulting in forms like ein rosanes Auto or simply ein rosa Auto.

Greek

The terms for "blue" and "green" have changed completely in the transition from Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

to Modern Greek

Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...

. Ancient Greek had γλαυκός "bluish green, blue-green", contrasting with χλωρός "yellowish green".
Modern Greek has πράσινο (prásino) for green, and the recent loan μπλε (ble bleu) for blue.

Iranian

In Kurdish

Kurdish language

Kurdish is a dialect continuum spoken by the Kurds in western Asia. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages....

the word "şîn" , 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

Kurdish flag

The Flag of Kurdistan first appeared during the Kurdish independence movement from the Ottoman Empire. It is said to have been created in the 1900s by the organisation of Xoybûn...

.

Ossetian has one word for blue, light blue and green - цъæх (tsah), but it also has a separate word for green - кæрдæгхуыз (kardaghuyz), literally - grassy (from кæрдæг - grass). The latter derives from кæрдын (kardyn) - to mow, i.e. grass is what is mowed (like in German Heu (hau) < hauen (to mow)).
Ossetian also has several words for light blue: æрвхуыз (arvhuyz) from æрвон - sky; бæлонхуыз (balonhuyz) from бæлон - pigeon (a calque from Russian, cf. голубой (light blue) < голубь (pigeon)).

Pashto

Pashto language

Pashto , known as Afghani in Persian and Pathani in Punjabi , is the native language of the indigenous Pashtun people or Afghan people who are found primarily between an area south of the Amu Darya in Afghanistan and...

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 language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

words for blue include ābi (literally the color of water, from āb 'water'), for blue generally; nili (from nil, 'indigo dye

Indigo dye

Indigo dye is an organic compound with a distinctive blue color . Historically, indigo was a natural dye extracted from plants, and this process was important economically because blue dyes were once rare. Nearly all indigo dye produced today — several thousand tons each year — is synthetic...

'), for deeper shades of blue such as the color of rain clouds; fayruzeh 'turquoise

Turquoise

Turquoise is an opaque, blue-to-green mineral that is a hydrous phosphate of copper and aluminium, with the chemical formula CuAl648·4. It is rare and valuable in finer grades and has been prized as a gem and ornamental stone for thousands of years owing to its unique hue...

stone', used to describe the color of blue eyes; lājvardi or lāzhvardi 'lapis lazuli

Lapis lazuli

Lapis lazuli is a relatively rare semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense blue color....

color', source of the words lazuli and azure
Azure
In heraldry, azure is the tincture with the colour blue, and belongs to the class of tinctures called "colours". In engraving, it is sometimes depicted as a region of horizontal lines or else marked with either az. or b. as an abbreviation....

; nilufari 'water lily

Nymphaeaceae

Nymphaeaceae is a family of flowering plants. Members of this family are commonly called water lilies and live in freshwater areas in temperate and tropical climates around the world. The family contains eight genera. There are about 70 species of water lilies around the world. The genus...

color'; and kabud, an old literary word for 'blue'.

The Persian word for green is 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

Sudan

, dark-skinned people may be described as "green."

The color of the sky is variously described in Persian

Persian language

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 akhzar and khazrā are used for epithets of the sky or heaven, such as charkh-e akhzar 'green wheel'.

Indic

Indic languages distinguish blue from green. In Urdu, blue is neela and green is sabz. There are some names of shades of blue as well, like ferozi.

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 Castilian Spanish making up the other two terms (berde from Spanish "verde", green, and gris from Spanish "gris", gray).

Finnish

Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

makes a distinction between vihreä (green) and sininen (blue). Turquoise

Turquoise (color)

Turquoise or is a slightly blueish tone of light green. The color is based on the gem turquoise. The term comes from the French for Turkish.At right is displayed the X11 color named turquoise....

or teal

Teal (color)

Teal is a medium blue-green color. It is named after the Common Teal, a member of the duck family, whose eyes are surrounded by the color.Teal is one of the initial group of 16 HTML/CSS web colors formulated in 1987, shown below....

(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 Finnic languages

Finnic languages

The term Finnic languages often means the Baltic-Finnic languages, an undisputed branch of the Uralic languages. However, it is also commonly used to mean the Finno-Permic languages, a hypothetical intermediate branch that includes Baltic Finnic, or the more disputed Finno-Volgaic languages....

and is thus dated to the era of the Proto-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

Substratum

In linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum...

). 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

Permic languages

Permic languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. They are spoken in the foothills of the Ural Mountains of Russia.* Komi** Komi-Permyak** Komi-Yodzyak ** Komi-Zyryan...

, 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 Finnic origin.

The differentiation of several colors by hue

Hue

Hue is one of the main properties of a color, defined technically , as "the degree to which a stimulus can be describedas similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, green, blue, and yellow,"...

is at least Baltic-Finnic (a major subgroup of Uralic) in origin. 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. Alternatively, it appears that the distinction between valkea and musta was in fact "clean, shining" vs. "dirty, murky". The original meaning of sini was possibly either "black/dark" or "green". Mauno Koski's theory is that such that dark colors of high saturation — both blue and green — would be sini, while shades of color with low saturation, such as dark brown or black, would be musta. Although it is theorized that originally vihreä was not a true color name and was used to describe plants only, the occurrence of vihreä or viha as a name of a color in several related languages shows that it was probably polysemic (meaning both "green" and "verdant") already in early Baltic-Finnic. However, whatever the case with these theories, differentiation of blue and green must be at least as old as the Baltic-Finnic languages

Baltic-Finnic languages

The Finnic or Baltic Finnic languages are a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by about 7 million people....

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).

Turkic

The Kazakh language

Kazakh language

Kazakh is a Turkic language which belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages, closely related to Nogai and Karakalpak....

, like many Turkic languages

Turkic languages

The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...

, 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.

Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

treats dark or navy blue (lacivert, from the same Persian root as English azure
Azure
In heraldry, azure is the tincture with the colour blue, and belongs to the class of tinctures called "colours". In engraving, it is sometimes depicted as a region of horizontal lines or else marked with either az. or b. as an abbreviation....

and lapis lazuli
Lapis lazuli
Lapis lazuli is a relatively rare semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense blue color....

) 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 لاجورد lājvard 'lapis lazuli

Lapis lazuli

Lapis lazuli is a relatively rare semi-precious stone that has been prized since antiquity for its intense blue color....

', a semiprecious stone with the color of navy blue. In the pre-Islamic religion of the Turks

Tengriism

Tengriism is a Central Asian religion that incorporates elements of shamanism, animism, totemism and ancestor worship. Despite still being active in some minorities, it was, in old times, the major belief of Turkic peoples , Bulgars, Hungarians and Mongols...

, blue is the color that represented the east, as well as the zodiac sign Aquarius (the Water Bearer). A characteristic tone of blue, turquoise

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, gök 'sky'. The name is still in use in many rural areas. For instance, in many regions of Turkey, when mold is formed on cheese, the phenomenon is called gögermek 'turning into the color of gök/sky'.

Mongolian

In Mongolian

Mongolian language

The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...

, 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).

Dravidian

Tamil

Tamil language

Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...

clearly distinguishes between the colors green (pachai), blue (neelam) and black (karuppu). There are no separate words for light and dark blue.

Chinese

The modern Chinese language

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 , is also used. It can refer to either blue or green, or even (though much less frequently) to black

Black

Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light...

, as in xuánqīng ( where refers to black). For example, the Flag of the Republic of China

Flag of the Republic of China

The Flag of the Republic of China is red with a navy blue canton bearing a white sun with 12 triangular rays. In Chinese, the flag is commonly described as Blue Sky, White Sun, and a Wholly Red Earth to reflect its attributes....

is today still referred to as qīng tiān, bái rì, mǎn dì hóng ("Blue Sky, White Sun, Whole Ground Red" — ); whereas qīng cài 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

Vernacular Chinese

Written Vernacular Chinese refers to forms of written Chinese based on the vernacular language, in contrast to Classical Chinese, the written standard used from the Spring and Autumn Period to the early twentieth century...

as the social norm, replacing Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...

Japanese

The Japanese word , exactly the same kanji

Kanji

Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

character as the Chinese qīng above, can refer to either blue or green depending on the situation. Modern Japanese

Japanese language

has also adopted the Chinese word for , although this was not always so. Ancient Japanese did not have this distinction: the word midori only came into use in the Heian period

Heian period

The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...

, 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

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.: thus, even though most Japanese consider them to be green, the word ao is still used to describe certain vegetable

Vegetable

The noun vegetable usually means an edible plant or part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed. This typically means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant....

s, apple

Apple

The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree, species Malus domestica in the rose family . It is one of the most widely cultivated tree fruits, and the most widely known of the many members of genus Malus that are used by humans. Apple grow on small, deciduous trees that blossom in the spring...

s, and vegetation

Chlorophyll

Chlorophyll is a green pigment found in almost all plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. Its name is derived from the Greek words χλωρος, chloros and φύλλον, phyllon . Chlorophyll is an extremely important biomolecule, critical in photosynthesis, which allows plants to obtain energy from light...

. Ao is also the name for the color of a traffic light

Traffic light

Traffic lights, which may also be known as stoplights, traffic lamps, traffic signals, signal lights, robots or semaphore, are signalling devices positioned at road intersections, pedestrian crossings and other locations to control competing flows of traffic...

. However, most other objects—a green car

Automobile

An automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...

, a green sweater

Sweater

A sweater, jumper, pullover, sweatshirt, jersey or guernsey is a garment intended to cover the torso and arms. It is often worn over a shirt, blouse, T-shirt, or other top, but may also be worn alone as a top...

, and so forth—will generally be called midori. Japanese people also sometimes use the word , based on the English word "green", for colors. The language also has several other words meaning specific shades of green and blue.

Korean

The native Korean

Korean language

word (Revised Romanization: pureu-da adj.

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

) may mean either blue or green, or bluish green. This word is used as in (pureun haneul, blue sky) for blue or as in (pureun sup, green forest) for green. Distinct words for blue and green are also used; (paran adj.

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

), / (paransaek/parang n.

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

) for blue, (chorok adj.

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

/n.

Noun

), (choroksaek n.

Noun

or for short, noksaek n.

Noun

) 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 is also used for both blue and green. It is a loan from Chinese ' onMouseout='HidePop("72619")' href="/topics/Pinyin">pinyin

Pinyin

Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

: qing) and is used in the proper name Cheong Wa Dae ( or Hanja

Hanja

Hanja is the Korean name for the Chinese characters hanzi. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation...

: ), the Blue House, which is the executive office and official residence of the President of the Republic of Korea.

Vietnamese

Vietnamese language

usually does not use separate words for green and refers to that color using a word that can also refer to blue

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.

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

Tagalog language

Tagalog is an Austronesian language spoken as a first language by a third of the population of the Philippines and as a second language by most of the rest. It is the first language of the Philippine region IV and of Metro Manila...

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").

Bantu

The Swahili

Swahili language

Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...

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.)

Zulu

Zulu language

Zulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population...

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

American languages

In the Lakota Sioux language

Lakota language

Lakota is a Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of the Sioux tribes. While generally taught and considered by speakers as a separate language, Lakota is mutually understandable with the other two languages , and is considered by most linguists one of the three major varieties of the Sioux...

, the word tĥo is used for both blue and green.

Single words for blue/green are also found in Mayan languages

Mayan languages

The Mayan languages form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million indigenous Maya, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras...

; for example in the Yukatek Maya language

Yukatek Maya language

Yucatec Maya , called Màaya t'àan by its speakers, is a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula and northern Belize...

blue/green is yax.

Tupian languages

Tupian languages

The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani.-History, members and classification:...

did not originally differ between the two colors, though they may now as a result of interference of Spanish (in the case of Guaraní

Guaraní language

Guaraní, specifically the primary variety known as Paraguayan Guaraní , is an indigenous language of South America that belongs to the Tupí–Guaraní subfamily of the Tupian languages. It is one of the official languages of Paraguay , where it is spoken by the majority of the population, and half of...

) or Portuguese (in the case of Nheengatu

Nheengatu

The Nheengatu language , often spelled Nhengatu, is an Amerindian language of a Tupi–Guarani family. It is also known by the Portuguese names língua geral da Amazônia and língua geral amazônica, both meaning "Amazonian General Language," or even by the Latin lingua brasilica...

). The Tupi

Old Tupi language

Old Tupi or Classical Tupi is an extinct Tupian language which was spoken by the native Tupi people of Brazil, mostly those who lived close to the sea. It belongs to the Tupi–Guarani language family, and which has a written history spanning the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries...

word obý ([oβɨ]) meant both as does the Guarani

Guaraní language

hovy (ɦɔvɨ).

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)

Arabic

Hebrew

Baltic

Slavic

Celtic

Romance

Germanic

Greek

Iranian

Indic

Basque

Finnish

Hungarian

Turkic

Mongolian

Dravidian

Chinese

Japanese

Korean

Vietnamese

Filipino (Tagalog)

Bantu

American languages

See also