Re: Blue grass and skies

From: "Yoon Ha Lee"

> On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, John Cowan wrote:
>
> > Nonetheless, many languages, including Latin, Classical Greek, and
Welsh,
> > make no such general distinction.  That is not to say that they cannot
say
> > sky color" or "grass color", but rather that the normal, universally
applicable,
> > unqualified color word covers both meanings.
>
> Korean does that too.  Paransaek (I *think* that's the right
> transliteration) is blue or green; choroksaek is exclusively green.
> There's no word for just blue unless my mom missed it.  <wry g>
Chinese has "qing1" which describes the color of mountains in the distance
but also covers a range of tourquoise to teal. "Lan2" is blue; unqualified,
I tend to think of sky-blue, cerulean at first utterance, but given foreign
context, royal blue falls under the same category (ie. no yellow). "Lü4"
points to emerald-colored-to-Kelly-green. Traditional literature says the
Japanese can't distinguish between blue and green. "Ao" grafts to the
character "qing1" and Japanese drivers say that a green traffic light is
"ao" (whereas a Chinese would say it's "lü4"). But Japanese has "midori",
which is more "Kelly-green". We also should not forget that Japanese allows
for colors such as "buruu", "guri~n", and "reddo", calquing for the Western
spectrum. I would imagine Korean plays a similar game.

Kou