Talk:Distinguishing blue from green in language

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[edit] English

This article is plainly incorrect. There are dozens of color names in the space that is claimed to be ambiguous; however, the color class is called "Cyan," and cyan is not a subset of blue. They might as well suggest that there's no color between red and yellow. Cyan was known in English at least as early as the first color Gutenbergs, when it was observed to be a component of rich blue colors (ask an artist how to make blue in CMYK; it's complicated.) Whereas it is interesting that languages have differing granularities for colors, as well as that there may be a predictable pattern to the emergence of differentiation, they could at least get the basics of English right in the English wikipedia, no?

To wit, if one takes the time to look at the CIE color model at the top of the discussion page, cyan is much closer to green than blue; the eye makes a clear line between blue and cyan, but the blend between cyan and green is hard to place. See that big horizontal line between blue and cyan? Find its parallel for cyan and green. The idea that blue folds in cyan is fairly appalling.

[edit] Greek

Article goes into too much detail and includes several color terms that are either highly informal or loan words from other languages.

For example, I've never heard of "παγωνί" or "φουντουκί" although I can easily imagine what they mean: one can append the "-ί" ending to almost any noun "X" refering to an object, to create an adjective meaning "color simliar to that of X". So, since "παγώνι" (note the difference in the accent) = "peacock", "φουντούκι" = "hazelnut", "αμύγδαλο" = "almond", etc., the meaning can be easily inferred. However, if those terms are included in the article, why stop there? How about "λουλακί" ("λουλάκι" = "indigo"), "αχλαδί" ("αχλάδι" = "pear"), "μαρουλί" ("μαρούλι" = "lettuce"), and an almost infinite number of other possibilities?

With respect to loan words, "βιολέ/βιολετί", "χακί", and "τυρκουάζ" are transliterations into Greek of "violet", "khaki", and "turquoise" (pronounced exactly the same way).

It would seem to me that many of these are terms one might use when, e.g., clothes-shopping, but I do not see the linguistic or scientific merit of the terms chosen for inclusion in that section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.34.20.19 (talk) 18:28, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Japanese

Green traffic lights in Japan appear to me to be bluish green, that is, they are green with more blue than a true green. The Japanese Wikipedia states that they are green. (See ja:信号機.) 「道路上において交通整理を行う色は世界共通で、緑（■）（日本では青と表現）・黄（■）・赤（■）の３色となっており」　It states that the color is green although it is expressed with the word "ao" in Japanese. The Japanese Wikipedia further states that they are as blue as they can be made within international standards for green lights. It refers to a Web site http://www14.cds.ne.jp/~signal/ which has an FAQ section. One of the questions, 「信号機の色はなぜ赤・青・黄なのですか？」 has an answer stating more specifically that CIE establishes standards for red, yellow, green, blue and white signals, and that Japan's traffic signals are red, yellow and green according to CIE standards (blue and white being used for non-traffic applications such as aviation). It further asserts that Japan adds as much blue as possible within the CIE standard for green signals, doing this for people with colorblindness. Fg2 09:19, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

I stand corrected, then! I'll change it back. --Simoes 16:36, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Color maps

It might be helpful to get some color maps of the terms for use in this article. -Branddobbe 15:27, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Too specific

The article states separating green from yellow... is there an article on that?

I don't see how the distinction between blue and green is any more encyclopedic than the distinction between red and brown, green and yellow, blue and purple, etc. Color terms are different from culture to culture. I think the scope of this page may be too specific. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:07, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Berlin and Kay

I've added a reference to Berlin and Kay's research that explains why the green/ blue distinction is significant.--Ethicoaestheticist 20:04, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I've removed my edit to the talk page while I double check!

According to Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's 1969 study Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, if a language makes a distinction between green and blue, it will also have a distinct term for red. If no distinction is made the language will have terms for white/black and green/yellow, but not necessarily red. (Summarised in David Crystal, The Encyclopedia of Language (1997) (p106)).

--Ethicoaestheticist 20:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Correction: 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 colour terms the first terms to emerge are those for white/black, red and green/yellow. (Summarised in David Crystal, The Encyclopedia of Language (1997) (p106)).

If my earlier mis-reading of the research casts doubt on this version (!) you can find lots of information by Googling 'Berlin Kay green blue'.

--Ethicoaestheticist 23:50, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Welsh and Irish

In Modern Irish, gorm is the word for "blue"—the first part (gor(m)) pronounced as in the Welsh gwyr(dd).

Can anyone confirm the assertion (somewhat irrelevant anyway) that gor and 'gwyr are pronounced the same? I sort of doubt it! Flapdragon (talk) 20:46, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I can confirm that they're not pronounced "the same"! And, as you say, any similarity in their sound is irrelevant anyway. The words are not related (gwyrdd is derived from Latin -- and gwrm, the true Welsh cognate of Irish gorm, is obsolete in the modern language).
Consequently I intend to delete the statement. -- Picapica (talk) 13:36, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Portuguese

According to this article, Russian is somewhat special for having two different names for both light and dark blue, which are treated as different colours, but such a distinction is found also in Portuguese.

Although portuguese does not have a name for cyan (which is assumed to be "sky blue", except when the anglicism is incorrectly used), it does have a special word for the dark blue: "anil". Anil is also the name of a chemical that is called "bleach" in English, but the color "anil" is a very dark blue (as dark as navy blue). The problem is that this word is falling out of usage, especially in Brazil and tends to be used for any blue: I have heard things like céu azul anil ("bleach-blue sky"). 201.78.67.99 (talk) 02:37, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, this is very odd. According to the Portuguese wikipedia, Portuguese does have a word for "cyan", namely ciano (a.k.a. verde-água or azul-piscina). And the colour anil is what is called "indigo" in English. (As for "bleach", isn't that lixívia in Portuguese?)
Another even curiouser thing is that cyan (what most people would consider a very light shade of blue) has been given a name derived from the Greek kyanos, which means "DARK blue"! (Cyanide gets its name because it was first obtained by heating the pigment powder used to make "Prussian blue", a very dark shade of blue.) -- Picapica (talk) 14:51, 13 May 2008 (UTC)


[edit] pashto

In pashto For blue we say abee or aby not sheen. sheen is only for green —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.232.84.93 (talk) 23:59, 16 May 2008 (UTC)