COLOUR WORDS: The astounding origins of "blue", "black", "orange", "red" & other colors

Prepare to be amazed by the surprising origins of the English words for colours (or colors for our American friends). I promise you'll have at least one "wow" moment as I reveal:
🔵 Why the Ancient Greeks had no word for BLUE.
🔶 How the fruit "ORANGE" came before the colour.
◼️ Why BLACK used to mean WHITE.
🔴 Which colour we named first (I've given you a hint)
💿 Why there are two ways to spell GREY/GRAY
🌈 And much, much more.
Find out the etymologies of black, white, gray, blue, brown, green, orange, purples, pink, red and yellow - from their origins thousands of years ago, through Old English and into the present day.
Let's enjoy some colourful language!
==
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==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Introduction
0:41 Colour & Color
1:26 Origin of BLACK
4:18 Origin of WHITE
5:10 Two spellings of GRAY/GREY
6:30 No word for BLUE
8:55 Italians and AZZURRO
10:01 Origin of BROWN
10:50 Origin of GREEN
11:35 ORANGE or norange?
13:07 Origin of PINK
13:27 Origin of PURPLE
14:18 Origin of RED
15:16 Origin of YELLOW
16:30 Goodbye

[@bigaspidistra]

Swart for black still exists in some dialects, with the adjective swarthy being in standard English for dark more associated with skin colour.

[@RobWords]

I can't believe I forgot to mention "swarthy"! I absolutely meant to.

[@bigaspidistra]

@@RobWords I thought the colour beginning with a was going to be amber ...

[@marcvanpoucke5560]

In Dutch black is zwart

[@Dadas0560]

@@marcvanpoucke5560 German shwarc. Edit: schwarz

[@glennbabic5954]

How does anyone knows how extinct languages were spoken?

[@Lily-Bravo]

When teaching little children in London, a child drew a night scene for me with an orange sky. He insisted that the night sky was orange, and then I noticed that where he lived, the orange street lamps had indeed made the sky look orange, and his observation chastened me and made me listen more closely to the wisdom of infants.

[@tribequest9]

Wisdom of infants………you must be an sjw.

[@kijeenki]

interesting. in my area, the night sky has a greenish shade

[@johnpettigrew83]

Brilliant

[@kevinjones5001]

Thanks for sharing this little reminder of how literal experience and iconic tropes can differ in contextual practice.

[@yuyiya]

In primary school, I painted a picture of a stormy sky we'd seen on a Sunday drive. Deep blue clouds, with dark golden orange sky below them. Teacher rubbished it! Quite put me off painting for a long time. 😞

[@colinahearne2150]

I’m surprised that you brushed over pink so quickly. “To Pink” was the practice of cutting a decorative edge into material, to reveal the colours of underlying materials. Pinks, the flower, were named so, because their petals have a decorative “pinked” edge. They also happened to be a shade of light red, hence the colour became known as pink (also not all Pinks are pink, you can get white pinks too). You can still purchase “Pinking shears”, which are scissors, used in tailoring and dressmaking, which cut a decorative zig-zag edge on cloth, which is supposed to stop it from fraying.

[@frankfriedlos3721]

Yes Colin, that wa my immediate reaction too, the flowers being named after their pinked edges, not their colour, which can be varied.

[@nct948]

interesting addition, thanks

[@lizardog]

It's also a term in fencing. To be "pinked" is to be stabbed lightly with a pointed weapon aka "pricked."

[@reichen666]

Probably a mild manifestation of misogyny (since pink is always associated with females) but yeah, I, too, would have wanted to hear more idioms like "in the pink of health" or something. I just discovered this channel by the way. I hope the host is a progressive person. 😕🤞🏼

[@jeannettehope670]

@@reichen666 Pink was originally associated with boys, as a junior version of the male colour red - think traditional red army uniforms. Blue was originally associated with women and girls, traditionally the colour of the Virgin Mary. The switch to blue for boys and pink for girls is quite recent, mid 20th century.

[@Banzybanz]

Another thing to consider Rob, bronze is only that dark coppery colour when polished. On exposure to the elements, it forms a very blue coloured patina, as in the case of the Statue of Liberty. When the Greeks were referring to bronze skies, they must have been referring to the blue colour of bronze left out in the open.

[@willhooke]

Interesting 🤔

[@mootenic]

Interesting 🤔

[@andyarken7906]

That patina can be more greenish or blue. Since it is called "Grünspan" in German, I had to google it to realise that it is occasionally rather blue. The word always made me think of it as green only.

[@marcusdeangelis4143]

Interesting 🤔

[@willhooke]

I think this comment is one where people get a big 'oohhh! for real?! 🤯' moment from it Especially when they think about bronze skies and think 'what are the ancients meaning by this? 🤔'

[@frankboulton2126]

This video made me realize that English "white" and Sanskrit "śveta" meaning "white" are cognate. There are many blue wildflowers. My favourite colour is indigo. The word "nerantza" is found in Modern Greek but is used to refer only to the bitter orange, which we use for making marmelade.

[@biosparkles9442]

I'm surprised that you didn't mention the two words Latin had for "blue" - the first being caeruleus, from caelum meaning 'sky' (which was also eventually synonymous with azure, which comes from lapis lazuli), which gave us the words 'celeste' and 'celestial', and the second being lividus, which often referred to the blueish grey colour of a corpse. It was used to describe the colour of bruises as well, which may be where the phrase "black and blue" referring to being bruised comes from. In fact, in medicine today, something being "livid" means that is a bluish colour - e.g. livid haematomas are large bruises with a bluish appearance. Try as I might, I can't figure out where the Latin 'liveo' came from, it seems to be from a very old proto-indo-european root that may have also given us the word 'sloe', which is of course a berry with a greyish-bluish exterior. It's possible that 'liveo' also gave rise to the word 'lavendar' or 'lavendula'. So, in Latin, if something was blue it was either the colour of the sky, or the colour of dead people/bruising, and I find that quite fascinating. 'Cyan' and 'indigo' also have very interesting etymologies, but I don't want to write half a book in the comments so I'll let you google that on your own.

[@fructiferous]

ah, caeruleus must be where cerulean comes from. very neat

[@biosparkles9442]

@@fructiferous Yep, spot on

[@roringusanda2837]

Is livio where we get Livid from? An intense color or feeling?

[@roringusanda2837]

What about the Russians? They have a distinction between blue, and light blue, and they are separate colors, I think...I mean that they do not think of them as blue and light blue.

[@biosparkles9442]

@@roringusanda2837 Sure is

[@PhilBagels]

So many of them seem to come from a word meaning "bright". I remember the heraldic words for colors, which come from French: Argent - White Or - Yellow Gules - Red Azure - Blue Vert - Green Purpure - Purple Sable - Black

[@Mairtn-dt3kk]

Yes (excepted this : "green" is called "sinople" and the world has a so strange etymology because it used to designate shade of red). Litterally, in French, "argent" = "silver", "or" = "gold", "gueules" = "maw", "sable" = "sand'.

[@lmeeken]

Russian also has the distinction between deep blue ('cinni') and sky blue ('goluboi'), a fact I became acutely aware of as a foreigner teaching English to some Russian primary schoolers. At an age where your favorite color is still one of your defining key personality traits, you're not going to stand for some grownup telling you your favorite color is blue, when it's CLEARLY goluboi!

[@thevalery]

I'm from Russia myself, and I was greatly surprised in elementary school, when we were learning English, that English-speaking people refer to a pair of related but different colors "синий [ˈsʲinʲɪɪɪ̯] " and "голубой [ɡəɫʊˈboɪ̯]" as "blue" and "light blue". And there is another word in Russian for blue [ɡəɫʊˈboɪ̯] - лазуревый/лазоревый [ɫɐˈzurʲɪvɨɪ̯] / [ɫɐˈzorʲɪvɨj] and it can be translated closer into English as "cerulean", "azure" and it sounds literally like the Italian azzurro. And also in Russian LGBTQIA+ representatives are called by the same color - голубой [ɡəɫʊˈboɪ̯], sort of like "he is голубой (light blue)"

[@kacpersuski4459]

Interesting - in polish we use 'błękitny' for sky blue and "niebieski" for all others, but it doesn't really make sense bcoz niebieski comes from "niebo" - word for sky or heaven.

[@auh2o148]

​@kacpersuski4459 I'm pretty sure 'niebo' is referring to the night sky and heaven because some ancient cultures referred the Lapis Lazuli (blue stone) to represent the heavens because of its hue, with streaks of white calcite resembling clouds, and specks of pyrite looking like stars.

[@Schody_lol]

@@kacpersuski4459there’s also “granatowy” for dark blue.

[@frtzkng]

Interestingly enough, the Baltic languages lost that distinction again, even though they are very closely related to Slavic languages such as Russian. In Lithuanian, голубой is žalsvai mėlyna, meaning greenish blue, teal, while Latvian uses ciāns, from cyan; and are considered shades of blue.

[@TPishek]

I was surprised when you got to pink that you didn’t mention why the flower was named pink in the first place. The edges of the petals are jagged - this old meaning of pink can still be found today in “pinking shears” which cut fabric in a zigzag.

[@dialatedmcd]

*looks at curved pinkies* Huh.

[@stewartkramer9112]

Alas, the relationship is uncertain, according to the OED. Decorative pinking was originally puncturing and pricking holes, and the later sense of zig-zag cuts might be from (or at least influenced by) the flower petal shape, but the "obvious" connection to pinking shears isn't the etymology for the flower.

[@jeffm4730]

But is that really "why the flower was named pink in the first place"? Did pink originally mean something like "jagged" and that's how the flower got its name? Or are those types of scissors just called that because they make shapes like the flower?

[@robertlomax8270]

I had heard that it comes from the Dutch word for little, as the pink flower is so named as it is little.The little finger is referred to as a pinkie.

[@julietardos5044]

Thank you! I've wondered about that.

[@wayner396]

Your puns and subtle jokes that weave their way through your narrative are an absolute delight to listen to. I would love more videos on color origins. This was absolutely fascinating.

[@mrmarmellow563]

YES PUN Are EVEN BETTER Than RAINBOW'Z🌈!!

[@kellylogan4650]

colour!

[@mrmarmellow563]

HYPE📌🚩💥🍾🍵

[@suprememasteroftheuniverse]

I don't know if it's ignorance or visual deficiency. Pink is not a shade of red. Pink contains blue so it's in the family of lilac, purple and violet. Indeed, after he shows a pink that's actually pink but insists that's not another color but it is a completely different color but being light red but a mix of red and blue. Maybe light lilac. Obviously he has some problem.

[@suprememasteroftheuniverse]

Also proto Indo European is no, was not a real language so stop citing it.

[@nthgth]

Re: brown - I highly suggest Technology Connections' video "Brown; Color is Weird" where he goes into some (not excruciating) detail about how color names are derived and how it relates to how we perceive colors culturally. And also how brown is really just dark orange. But like magenta and pink (and Italians' blue vs. azure), we've decided it's distinct enough to be considered different. But on that subject, it's interesting how of course azure looks distinct among blues, but we still call it a version of blue unlike Italians. Likewise, I might be the only English speaker who considers magenta a version of slightly-purpled pink.

[@AndyWitmyer]

I loved that episode of Technology Connections! It's lowkey one of my favorites of his (and he's got a lot of bangers). An excellent channel, all around.

[@descentplayer]

If brown is dark orange, then orange is light brown. But orange is not light brown in the same way that pink is light red. In the first case, you are increasing the saturation of the orange/brown hue. In the second case, you are mixing a fully saturated red hue with white, which washes it out to pink. This is explained by the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness color model. Lightened brown is actually a beige or almond color. Pink is lightened red, whereas magenta (sometimes referred to as hot pink in American English) is a fully saturated hue between red and green in the color wheel (purple is a less saturated magenta). The color of the sky is frequently a shade of cyan, which is the hue between blue and green. It is sometimes referred to as sky blue. I am not certain, but I believe that azzurro may be a hue between blue and cyan. The sky is sometimes this hue. The terms dark and light are also incorrectly used for more and less saturation, which confuses people.

[@justinnamuco9096]

Brown is probably more common in nature than orange. So it would be more like orange is light brown, maybe with a little bit of red or yellow.

[@tantuce]

​@@justinnamuco9096 yes, also brown bear.

[@Kieselmeister]

Literally everyone who works with additive color mixing, (which is very important because it's how color pixels work and thus determines how colors appear on a screen), calls the equal mixture of light from a combination of Red and Blue pixels but not green "Magenta". (Red & Green produce "Yellow" & Green & Blue produce "Cyan".) "Magenta" is also the 'M' in CYMK printing which uses translucent color ink over a white background to produce colors that are actually bright. The Cyan, Yellow, & Magenta inks allow more light to reflect off the white background than Red, Green, & Blue ink would. This is because Cyan ink allows BOTH blue & green light through while only blocking red, with the Yellow only blocking blue, & the Magenta only blocking Green. (The 'K' is for "blacK" ink which produces the grayscale background image, and it is 'K' instead of 'B' because 'B' was already used for "Blue".) In subtractive color mixing, Blue paint absorbs both Red & Green and reflects only Blue, while Red blocks both Green & Blue and reflects only Red. So if you mix bright but opaque Red & Blue paint in equal parts then the mixture absorbs all of the green while reflecting half of the Blue & Half of the red, which produces a darker "Purple". Since the human eye is more sensitive to blue light than red light, and since subtractive opaque "Purple" pigment can never be more than half as color saturated as red & blue pigment, while additive transparent "Magenta" ink can be up to twice as brightly saturated as red & blue inks, the resulting colors are perceived as different by the eye despite actually being the same mixture at different intensity. "Purple"/"Magenta" is also the only color range that that humans can see which only exists as mixture of other colors. The actual color receptors in the human eye can only see the spectrum from Red to Green to Blue (and the 4th receptor type some females rarely have is a slightly different green.) Purple/Magenta doesn't actually exist as a wavelength of light but is essentially an optical illusion caused by way our brains process visual information, like the biological equivalent of an integer overflow in a computer Humans that have had cataract surgery can sometimes see past blue spectra to normally invisible Ultra-Violet light, and it just looks blue. (In fact UV light appearing as blue makes everything that reflects UV look MORE blue, like the world has a blue filter distorting the colors.)

[@busimagen]

"Pink" actually referred to a different color, a beige-like yellow (sometimes referred to as "stil de grain yellow" today). The change in what the color referred to occurred because the flower you referenced (which got its name from the jagged edge it has, that type of edge referred to as "pinked" from a different word meaning 'cut, jagged'). Then the "pink" meaning of the color switched from the yellow color to the pink color because of the association with the flower. This is also how pink went from being associated as a men's color (even used for military uniforms, some of these uniforms referred to as "pinks" for their color, yet are now referred to as "khaki" after the referred-to color had changed), but after which color it referred to changed, pink suddenly became associated with women, instead (the color referred to changed, but the name was the same). Usually the old pink will be referenced by spelling it as "pinke" instead of "pink".

[@RobWords]

I shall cut this comment out (with my pinking shears) and stick it on my wall.

[@OldLordSpeedy]

It is interesting that baby boys wear pink originally in German places till Prussia military starts a sea military ships campaign where the military seamen wear a white blue uniform. So boys wear them in small size and baby boys wear blue and baby girls wear pink ... 🤯

[@GuinessOriginal]

@@RobWords there’s a comment above the explains link in even more detail, check it out

[@SteelJM1]

@@RobWords I always wondered why and how pinking shears got their name. Now I know.

[@VesnaVK]

@@RobWords pink deserves its own video, there's so much to say about it!

[@Pugopugo]

In Sweden people nowadays mostly say orange, roughly pronounciated "oransj". But when I was a kid some 40 years ago, an older word "brandgul" was used, literally meaning fire-yellow. The older generations back then primarily used that word. About pink we nowadays say "rosa", which is common in other languages. But back in the days the old generation would commonly say "skär", from the French "chair", meaning meat. In the late 1900:s we got cerise as well, but I get the impression that it might be fading away here.

[@4namolly]

Fire-yellow is a great name for orange 🤟

[@martinfiedler4317]

@@4namolly Or maybe flame-red. In any case, much more descriptive and poetic than ... "orange" 🔥

[@norarodriguez6539]

In German, we not only use rosa, but we differentiate between rosa and pink, where rosa is a lighter and much less bright shed than pink. Saying that, the question comes to my mind, why we even developed the different names for the different kinds of red in the end as language develops from culture and experiences of the people speaking it.

[@justincronkright5025]

I remember from high school in the late 2000s that I was so into Svenska. I remember my favourites for learning Swedish was a foreign language dictionary I picked up & SlayRadio's 'Mastering Swedish' of which there were 5 parts I believe. One sentence out of many that were being incrementally taught to a Brit - I'm Canadian instead, was 'Skiva Skära Skinkan Skevt'. It was translated as 'Cut the pink ham unevenly'. And so incidentally I might have actually learned pink in its more original form & I do wonder... would I perhaps confuse any Swedes younger than myself by using it? :)

[@justincronkright5025]

@@martinfiedler4317 What about copper-based woods on extra-terrestrial planets - making the hue much greener, hrmmm? :) Sorry I love thinking & being confrontational with it for the sake of fun & learning equally. I do like the basis for the term, but I know how I'd alter it depending on the other Germanic Languages. But it'd largely keep the same basic & inherently understandable background. It's either Flame-Colour or probably even Fire-Tip for me.

[@MP-hz6iz]

In Welsh, glas means blue, except when its used to describe vegetation, in which case it can mean green. Was an interesting parallel with the English etymology.

[@nousironsaubois]

I heard welsh and breton were close (on this channel actually) and blue/green is "glas" as well!

[@user-ie6qs7cg2g]

Bavarians do the same. Most apparent today when it comes to playing cards. The Bavarian cards have 4 „colours“: Acorn, Heart, Grass and Bells. Grass shows a leave and the As of Grass is referred to as „ the Blue“. And there is a folk song about a blue pear tree

[@Gallowglacht]

Your linguistic cousins the Irish picked the other side of the blue/green spectrum. Glas in Irish is green.

[@neil6477]

Several things happen when I watch your video's Rob. Firstly, they are incredibly informative and entertaining. Secondly, they really bring a smile to my face - I love the way you present them, just the right balance of humour and seriousness. Thirdly, the story of our language, or indeed perhaps all language, how it formed, evolved and changed, has become fascinating to me. Fourthly, and most surprisingly, the questions that arise as I think about words, their origin and how they inform us. The whole topic about 'seeing' pink and red as separate, the sea not being named as a clour but rather in terms of its brightness, etc... The implications for how these ideas influence what we experience, the way we interpret our sensory data and, perhaps, how and what we we actually think about. There is so much here. My only previous venture into something similar occured when teaching a small class about philosophy. We looked at a copy of the Meditations by Descartes. One thing that immediately stood out were the enourmously long sentences that he used. Of course this was down to the lack of any standardised punctuation but it made the students appreciate why such notation exists. Although the story of the introduction of punctuation would make a great video - or perhaps you've already done so, I'll check. I thank you so much for bringing something new and so interesting to my life. (I'm in my 70s and have grown tired of all the repetition I come across.)

[@Mertiy7]

It's interesting that in Turkish we do the opposite: if you translate "blue" it would be "mavi", but unlike Italian our blue is the lighter one, for dark blue we have an additional word "lacivert" which ultimately comes from the same root as "lazuli" in "lapis lazuli", as well as "azul", "azure" and "azzurro". So even though we have an additional word for a different type of blue with the same root as "azzurro" in Italian, we use it for darker blue, not lighter

[@RobWords]

Thanks for this! I had a proper "wow" moment with the link between lapis lazuli and azul etc.

[@Niinsa62]

Amazing that the world "azzuro", or "lacivert", would be used to mean two totally different shades of blue in Italian and Turkish! Well, "black" and "blanc" in English and French also have the same root, but mean the opposite. So it seems to happen. But still, interesting to learn about these things! You learn as long as you live, and you live as long as you learn.

[@ruedigernassauer]

One question : Why has the Turkish language two words for red, "kırmızı" and "kızıl"?

[@Freefromdogma]

I wonder about violet in relation to purple

[@arelendil7]

Interesting! In Spanish “azul” (from lapis lazuli) is the general word for blue. Unlike Italian, there is no word similar to blue, so I wonder about the etimology of Italian “blu”. There are other words for specific hues of blue: “ciano”, “turquesa”, “añil”, “marino”, “glauco”, “zarco”, “ceruleo”, “celeste”… although “glauco”, like the eyes of Athena, can actually be blue, green, grey or simply shinny 😅 better not to look Athena in the eye…

[@Inkjourney]

In Maori and other Pasifika languages, the colours come from nature. Kowhai is yellow and is named after a yellow flower, kakariki is green and is named after a parrot of the same colour. I love their naming devices

[@Noblebird02]

In yorta yorta word for red is blood blood (I can't remember the actual word) and green is grass-grass)

[@birzky]

It seems the Maori language did not have a word for "blue" until colonisation. The word for "blue", "puru", is a borrowing from English. Around the time the British signed a treaty with Maori and settled, Gladstone, the British Prime Minister and a scholar of Ancient Greek was in the academic discussion of whether the Ancient Greeks had a word for "blue", and my understanding is that some of the more "bookish" settlers related this to Maori description of "blue" and stated that Maori had been using Maori words for "green" ("kākāriki", "karera", and the like) to describe blue as well as green, not dissimilar to the way the Greeks used red for red, and for blue.

[@gasdive]

Also interesting (to me at least) is that pink is reddish white. Māwhero. Mā = white, whero = red.

[@gasdive]

@@birzky so is kahurangi (sky cloak) a modern invention? It seems to have an older meaning, of "precious", hence kahurangi applied to the very best pounamu (which are green), but it's hard to credit that sky-cloak isn't related to the colour of the sky in some way.

[@RadeticDaniel]

@@birzky the colour aoi in japanese also used to include light greens along with almost all blue shades. Hence why traffic signals are light blue over there today after being described as aoi. The colour we learn as green in japanese lessons, midori, was apparently originally for dark green leaves only. And to complete the color dance, several shades of what i consider dark blue are bundled with purple as murasaki. Counting suffixes and colour bands were by far the most confusing culture shocks in those lessons hahaha

[@FiXato]

Suddenly the name of the beverage from my Dutch childhood, Ranja, makes a lot more sense. I was hoping for a mention of 'violet' along with 'purple' though. Guess I'll have to delve into that on my own. ;)

[@Nimue09-iv7ck]

Man... I've always loved learning languages and learning ABOUT them, but watching your videos on etymology makes me even happier. You explain in such a fun way! P.S.: Gotta love the puns too!

[@Bastillian]

What is the etymology of the word etymology?

[@MKisFeelinSpicy]

As an American, I grew up seeing both spellings of 'grey'/'gray', presumably through public school education, which includes British authors among required reading. I don't know why, but I've written it as 'grey' for as long as I can remember (I probably whimsically thought it looked nicer than 'gray'), and no one has ever batted an eye at my spelling. I only realized later that it was not considered the standard US spelling.

[@MrVvulf]

Fellow yank here, and I've always spelled it 'grey', and never had a teacher try to correct that spelling. I think it's perfectly acceptable.

[@d.b.4671]

This might just be a personal quirk of mine, but I tend to think of warmer/lighter shades as 'grey' with an E, and cooler/darker shades as 'gray' with an A.

[@Rontero]

Came here to see if others agreed. I’ve never heard it called “American standard” spelling. I always thought it was arbitrary and another quirk of English.

[@MarcusCactus]

As a French-speaker, I discovered the American spelling through ACW wargames. I first thought it a spelling mistake when I read "Gray and Blue".

[@RSProduxx]

maybe a year ago I came across that topic and most or even all English tutors agreed that both writings are totally fine, no matter if you´re from the US or elsewhere.

[@Taipan108]

I’ve heard that the Ancient Greeks would describe the sky as bronze before (I think on Q.I). I imagined it was not because bronze is shiny, but rather because, as bronze corrodes, it turns blue (or cyan) with verdigris, a similar colour to the sky.

[@gabitamiravideos]

Thank you for writing this. I was unsure if I really remembered that tidbit, or if it was a false memory (I was thinking of corroded copper).

[@Fledhyris]

I'd agree with you there, except that copper (bronze) verdigris looks more green than blue. I've seen the sky go that colour before, but in general, on a hot sunny day such as they had extensively in ancient Greece, it isn't.

[@Fledhyris]

Oh hey! I've just watched Why The Ancient Greeks Couldn't See Blue by AsapSCIENCE and you need to go see this video, it explains everything! :D

[@DrFranklynAnderson]

@@Fledhyris Metatron just did a video debunking the “Ancient Greeks couldn’t see blue” theory, definitely worth watching!

[@gaywizard2000]

Fak! Could see blue? Couldn't see blue. There are only 2 colors in Greece, blue and white! Insanity!

[@trufflehunter58]

Thank you, Rob. Another great video. If Tolkien were still alive, whom C.S. Lewis described as someone who has "been inside language", he would be one of your subscribers. Love your work, sir.

[@dewaard3301]

The equivocation of blue and black to refer basically just to the shades of the sky was such an eye opener for me.

[@Chickasawndngirl]

That was pretty interesting. In my language we originally had one word for blue or green. We actually had to adopt a word from another language in the last few years, just to make the distinction between blue and green for the new generation of language learners. The language I speak is Chikashshanompa’. It’s the language of the Native American Chickasaw tribe in Oklahoma USA. Also interestingly, our word for blue/green also is used to describe raw fruit and the grey wolf.

[@tribequest9]

The question I have is why do you think that is? I’m still under the impression that the further back in human genealogy we go the more color blind people would be more common.

[@Chickasawndngirl]

@@tribequest9 Color blindness wouldn’t be my guess at all. First off, genetic mistakes that cause colorblindness and other problems, increase as human generations progress through history. There would’ve been much less mistakes the farther back in history you go unless you look at some isolated situations where a family tree goes straight up due to siblings marrying. Controlling genetic problems (though our ancestors wouldn’t have described it quite that way) was a major function of having various clans and rules about who you could and couldn’t marry. Secondly; As mentioned many times in this video, often color words described shine and other features of things. Likely, our ancestors in my tribe did the same and had just one word to account for all things that were both blue and green.

[@auntiesophiasays7437]

There's a comment further down about people in Kazakhstan using blue and green interchangeably. So perhaps it is a function of the ancientness of a language? If blue wasn't introduced until "recently" it makes sense that some old languages might reflect the lack of "blue". Fascinating.

[@debbiet5130]

Welsh also has this. Although the modern words for blue and green are glas and gwyrdd, glas can mean blue/green and is often applied to grass instead of gwyrdd. In fact, one of the words for grass is glaswellt.

[@ChasMusic]

Interesting, as is the reply about Welsh. There is a shade between blue and green that either I see as green and others see as blue (or maybe vice versa), so they don't seem to be that far apart, despite being completely different in the web red-green-blue color scheme to the point of green contributing a lot to lightness and blue contributing very little to lightness. Glad to learn you are actively working on your language and keeping it a living one by speaking it and adding to it.

[@kathilisi3019]

In German, there's a distinction between "pink" and "rosa" that's similar to the distinction between "blu" and "azzurro" in Italian. "Rosa" is the original German word meaning "pink", but nowadays it means softer shades of pink, while the English loanword "pink" is used for brighter, more vivid shades of pink.

[@VitorFM]

Nice to know that! In Portuguese Rosa is the flower Rose, and we call rosa a faint red, not the vivid red, just like you do! And pink is the vivid bright red that is used on text highlighters or barbie toys

[@VitorFM]

Actually, barbie toys is not really called pink in color, because they are not that vivid, but a intense rosa color...

[@maiiamiii]

Thanks! I wanted to mention exactly that. When I speak English I would never call something that is 'rosa' pink, I would always call it light pink.

[@zelandakhniteblade5436]

Similarly for purple, which is split in German between light-medium shades (lila) and darker intense purples (violet). Against that, many things that English speakers would describe as orange are yellow in German, the most common in everyday life being gelbe Limonade. As a Brit, German colours are generally just a bit weird...

[@kikibrnadic8788]

In Croatian we use "roza" the same way German uses it and "ružičasta" being the brighter more vibrant shades of pink. When it comes to blue we do make a distinction similar to Italian, but "plava" meaning blue is lighter and "modro" is a darker blue (I don't think English has a translation for this word). Also a bruise in Croatian is called a "modrica".

[@J0HN5AW]

Growing up on a farm, I always think of the green leaves on the top of a carrot when a "red head" is refered to as a "carrot top" :)

[@joshhiroti]

Excusing Puns is a requirement of this whole channel

[@meruluss]

Many years ago I was curious how the songbird, wheatear, got its name. When I looked up its etymology I was rewarded by the knowledge that it has nothing to do with wheat or ears. It originates from Old English and literally means "white arse". And yes, the wheatear indeed has a white rump.

[@doreenwatson-read]

thats too funny pmsl

[@larryvieira2859]

Stick it where the sun don’t shine!😂

[@AbWischBar]

I actually wondered if the French interpretation (blanc) of burned refers to the "whiteness" of ashes that often lay on top of the dark burned remains. Your videos give so much to think ... excellent material.

[@ragnkja]

Or it could literally refer the absence of colour, whether that’s because it’s too dark to perceive the colour or because it’s too bright. That’s certainly consistent with the meaning of “blank”.

[@feliciagaffney1998]

@@ragnkja white-hot

[@ccheyenne]

I thought the same, sometimes ashes are white

[@popsicle3649]

blank in German means shiny/ light / clean from Germanic *blanka - white. bleak comes from Old Norse and bleach from Old English my etymological dictionary tells me - with the connection to modern black. Nothing about it being borrowed from French.

[@AbWischBar]

@@popsicle3649 I know what "blank" means in German. I was rather referring to Rob's discussion of the French take on burned, which resulted in "blanc = white". Starts at 2:00. At about 2:29 the discussion is why one might interprete burned as "white". Rob refers to the flame. I on the other hand thought that whenever I see wood after it has burned, it is covered by the ashes, unless wind has carried it away. And these ashes are usually rather white.

[@judithvandijkhuizen8331]

I love this. But more colours, please! Turquoise? Different types of blue used by artists? Magenta? I'd like to hear more.

[@zqxzqxzqx1]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I always find your videos interesting. Take care and keep up the good work!

[@slotos]

Black and blank reminds me of Czech word for fresh (bread) - čerstvý - that is identical to Ukrainian word for stale (bread). Both go back to a root meaning “firm, crisp”. Both are correct applications of the concept. Fresh bread has a firm, crisp crust. Stale bread is a firm, crisp blunt weapon.

[@Dadas0560]

In modern Polish czerstwy means stale, but that wasn't always that way. About 500 years ago Polish and Czech were basically the same language.

[@dmisso42]

😆

[@BrennanYoung]

Nice! And "crust" in English is also sometimes a synecdoche for bread - or even food in general, as in "spare a crust for a homeless person". Bread (and dough) are slang for "money" of course.

[@kriiistofel]

What is more mind-boggling to me is that all those words - English black, German blank, French blanc, Polish biały and Czech bílý all have the same proto indo european root - bhel-

[@Dadas0560]

@@kriiistofel I don't find that so strange. It is much more boggling how some Polish and Czech words sound exactly the same, yet mean totally different things. Like Polish szukać - search, look for and Czech šukat - 🤣

[@alukuhito]

Some traditional Japanese colour names (not often used now): 鴇色 (tokiro) - pink - literally, Japanese crested ibis colour 海老茶 (ebicha) - dark red - literally, shrimp/prawn colour 狐色 (kitsuneiro) - goldish - fox colour 山吹色 (yamabukiiro) - yellow - Japanese globeflower colour 鶯色 (uguisuiro) - olive green - nightingale colour 浅葱色 (asagiiro) - torquoise - chive colour 常盤緑 (tokiwamidori) - dark green - connarite green 茄子紺 (nasukon) - deep purple - eggplant dark blue 藤色 (fujiiro) - light purple - wisteria colour

[@Coen80]

interesting. Here some Greek ones : Ροζ (Roz) -pink Κόκκινο (ko-kee-no) -red χρυσό (chree-so) -gold κίτρινο (kee-tree-no) -yellow ελία (eh-lee-ja) -olive Τυρκουάζ (tier-quaz) -turquoise πράσινο (pra-see-no) -green μωβ (mov) -purple βιολέτ (vee-o-let) -violet

[@asinglebraincell6584]

I had to google these to make sure I was imagining them right Wisteria colour is really really nice, I love it We need a word like that in English

[@jodypalm303]

Thanks. I'm trying to learn Japanese at the moment. This is helpful.

[@alukuhito]

@@jodypalm303 Good luck with the Japanese, but just a warning that these colour names are not helpful because most Japanese don't even know them. These are traditional names, rarely used today.

[@thekingsdaughter4233]

@@alukuhito oh... 😞 So what is mostly used now? Did the words simply evolve into something less poetic, or are there now words instead that came in from other languages?

[@lawjent]

Wish you had more episodes! I've seen it all💔 love your channel so happy I stumbled apoun it

[@johnburbank9125]

Fascinating!!!! I love all your talks… This one was, as all the others, full of interesting connections and information… Thank you (:

[@UmamiPapi]

Blue (ao) is still used to refer to green things in modern Japanese, even though there is a distinct word for green (midori). Such as a blue traffic light (green in English) or a blue forest (aomori).

[@annelyle5474]

There is a blurring between blue and green, particularly in countries close to the equator, that has been attributed to the effects of UV light - it damages the eyes and causes everything to have a yellow cast, particularly affecting the perception of blue/green. I wonder if that is behind the confusion between ao and midori

[@UmamiPapi]

@@annelyle5474 Interesting. Could just be that blue is uncommon and they are very similar colors, so they just let context differentiate too. Because Japan isn't equatorial.

[@treetopjones737]

@@annelyle5474 Also there are some people who have trouble seeing the difference between say ( blue )turquoise and a light green ( there is turquoise stone which has more yellow so it's green ).

[@janeleess]

Might be more to do with that particular word in that part of the world. In Old Chinese, 青 (qing) used to refer to a blue dye made out of a blue flower while 绿 (lü)referred to green. In modern Chinese, qing now refers to green, lü still refers to green, and the name of the blue flower now refers to blue. I'm not super familiar with Japanese so could be wrong here but I do believe the qing character correlates to the Japanese ao.

[@bernieabromaitis5202]

I’ve heard that in some Asian languages the distinction between blue and green arose from the division of natural vs man made. So, one word encompasses natural green and blue while two other words each describe man made blue and man made green

[@KK-tb5rw]

Very interesting, especially about blue. Ancient Japanese only had four colors -- blue (ao), red (aka), black (kuro), and white (shiro) -- which covered all other colors/shades. Examples from even today: green vegetables are blue, brown tea and orange carrots are red, dark items are black, and light items are white. The green traffic light is called "blue light (ao shingoh)", and the light's color has officially been changed to a bluish green for just Japan. All other colors are the names of objects plus an adjective suffix or noun suffix. Examples: mouse-color (nezumi-iro) or ash-color (hai-iro) for gray, soy sauce color (murasaki-iro) for purple, and plum color (momo-iro) for pink.

[@rahuldhargalkar]

Fascinating ❤️

[@ruben_balea]

Spain (at least my nearest city) has a lot of semaphores with those bluish green lamps and I always thought it was something related to colorblind people, maybe those are just lamps made in Japan.

[@anthonywayner8734]

Maybe color blindness played into this too

[@garrick3727]

A lot of traffic lights in different places do not have a strong green color for green. The US is very green, but it's more of a blue-green in many other countries. If you get up close to the light and the glass (or plastic) that it is made from, it's often surprisingly blue. It could be related to colorblindness but I don't think so, since for whatever reason that is less of an issue with bright objects.

[@MyLolle]

thank you. i didn’t know that. so, to this day, they only have 4 colors? and they SEE only 4 colors. it is hard to imagine…

[@maryturko6490]

Thank you!! Your talks are so much fun. I am a language lover and enjoy hearing about origins of English.

[@billypaisley6211]

I cannot place your accent, or what's left of it, Rob. Clearly you're a linguist and as such you speak very clearly (for context I'm from Leeds and have the accent to match lol). You say some of your vowels in quite a unique way, especially the 'u' sound which to my ear sounds awfully like how I say the same sound. Are you a Northerner?! (I really hope so 😂) In any case, I loved this video as I do all your videos. Super interesting, relevant and still full of surprises!

[@dil_hai_desi]

As an Indian who was learning Spanish, I was truly surprised by similarity between Naranga and Naranja....but then many words in Indian languages have their variations in Latin also E.g matra is madre and pratra is Padre. Another fun fact: the colour orange is called narangi in some of the Indian languages like Hindi, Sanskrit and Marathi

[@Banzybanz]

The word 'naranja' is a relatively new addition to Spanish. It came to Europe in the medieval era, via Persian traders. The word was originally for the fruit, then it began to be used for the colour. The words for mother/madre/matru/mata are far more fundamental. They all came from PIE, the ancestor of both Latin and Indic languages.

[@shawnferguson5681]

Naranja even sounds similar to orange

[@object-official]

​@@shawnferguson5681Orange comes from Naranja

[@eVill420]

Some words like Patra are very ancient, probably from 10 000 years ago, in Finnish, an otherwise completely different language, pappa means grandfather. Some words are so often used they barely change

[@idraote]

That's the Indoeuropean language family for you

[@ludoval4313]

The distinction between a light blue and a dark blue is also made in Russian where you have синий (darker) and голубой (lighter).

[@ragnkja]

“Sini” specifically refers to the kind of blue you see in patterned Chinese porcelain (whereas in English it’s the porcelain itself that’s called “china”).

[@geroutathat]

English has blue and then dark blue, navy. But light blue. In most african tribes they do this with green, so they have different colours for shades of green, and they see them as different as an English speaking person would see pink and red. But to an english speaking person they are all just "green". There is no dark green or light green.

[@ragnkja]

@@geroutathat The difference is that navy, like azure, is considered a shade of blue, rather than a separate colour. Pink is a much better example, because you can talk about “dark pink” and it isn’t the same as red.

[@geroutathat]

@@ragnkja of course pink is the easiest example, but a lot of people would treat navy like a different colour and not a shade. For example what's the name for dark shade of green or light green. We have words for neither that I know of. But if I was to say to someone in work "oh you're wearing a blue suit", they would look at it then look at me like I was crazy and say "it's navy" so for a lot of people the difference between blue and navy is same as pink and red. It's even defined as a colour between blue and black not a shade of blue. Im not saying navy is a better example. Merely the English language has a different colour in the blue spectrum for at least some people. For me, navy is a different colour, probably simply due to how I learned it. some people probably learn navy as "just dark blue", and no one would learn pink as "just light red".. baby blue is a shade for me. I'd never say "light baby blue" or "dark baby blue" cause it's just light blue. I would say "it's a dark navy"

[@ragnkja]

@@geroutathat But can you say “light navy”, or is it just as much of an oxymoron as “dark baby blue”?

[@teresajohnson5265]

You are brilliant!! Amazing teacher: knowledge, pace, sound, kindness in your approach, etc...THANK YOU!!!🎉🎉❤

[@mahaomm]

Fascinating information... And you make it enjoyable to watch thanks 😊

[@marcoanthony6747]

In Indonesian language, we add "tua" meaning "old" for darker shade of a color, and "muda" meaning "young" for lighter shade of color. So for deep blue color we call them "biru tua" and for light blue, "biru muda". And there is just biru for blue, or common blue.

[@unknownUserofYoutube]

Same in german just that we add hell "light" or dunkel "dark". So Hellblau and Dunkelblau. Except for pink, we call that rosa

[@luciocarvalho4986]

We have an example like this here in Brazil, but not so consistent as a rule, light blue is said as "azul bebê", which would mean "baby blue". But I suppose it's origin should have something to do with contemporary marketing than anything else :v

[@deewesthill1213]

It's interesting how a lot of words starting with bl- refer to various colors, a discoloration, eyelid, eyesight, or impairment of eyesight. Examples are blain (part of "chilblain", a skin discoloration), blanch (turn white), blaze (either intense fire or white patch on dark fur of animal), bleach, bleary (describes half-open tired eyes), blemish (discoloration, or a fault, probably akin to "blame"), blepharo- (Greek medical.prefix meaning "eyelid"), blight (plant disease causing discoloration), blind, blink, blitz, blizzard (intense snowstorm that dazzles the eyes), block (an object that prevents light coming in), blood/bleed, blond, blot, blotch, blur, blush.

[@yuyiya]

Can we trace the similarities to a common PIE root, I wonder?

[@deewesthill1213]

@@yuyiya Yes, although it is still hypothetical. (I forgot "bling", dazzling jewelry.)

[@TheDivayenta]

Fascinating observation! Gonna go look in my American Heritage Dictionary now to see if anything’s on that. They have the deepest etymologies and it was the textbook for my Indo-European studies class.

[@TheDivayenta]

Blister

[@deewesthill1213]

@@TheDivayenta Blister is in another group of bl- words i noticed with related meanings of "swell up"/"something that swells up", " forcefully expel air"/"noise with expulsion of air", including blab, bladder, blare, blast, bleat, blimp, blister, bloat, bloom, blossom, blow, blurt, bluster.

[@ahha6304]

Now you talk about Italians say "Azure" and "Blue" is separated, Thai language also has one "ฟ้า" as azure and "น้ำเงิน" as blue, as you described.

[@raminagrobis6112]

I love the bird calls we start hearing around the 3:00 marker. Nice nature touch that espouses the video's levity. Very nice presentation, Rob...

[@Eddi.M.]

Orange has an interesting side story. There is the French city of Orange, originally Arausio, in local language Aurenja, which is much much older than the name of the fruit or colour. On some crooked ways it got in the hands of the (Dutch) Dukes of Nassau. Oranje, Orania or Oranien were the translations of Orange. The connection to William of Orania is the reason why the Dutch are today so fond of the colour. Later, the Dutch brought the fruit from China to Europe. It was called Chinese Apple or sinaasappel (sorry if misspelled). From this name stems the parallel name of the orange in German, Apfelsine, and, as I learned here, forms of appelsin in many other Northern and Eastern European languages. (Result of the Hansa that most definitely said appelsien in Low German?) That the colour and the fruit have "something to do with each other" is obvious. How the name of the Dutch noble house, which is the name of a French city, was transferred to the Chinese fruit, I don't know. But the name of the colour should have followed thereafter. And the Dutch must have their hands in it.

[@BrennanYoung]

Was always curious about "apfelsine" and similar variants (appelsin in Danish, and апельсин in Russian). Didn't occur to me that "-sin" is China. Thank you!

[@RobWords]

Superb! Thank you

[@uncipaws7643]

I guess the French are to blame here, who somehow found Arausio and Naranja similar enough to make it the same word.

[@Eddi.M.]

Thinking about it, there is also a connection to the carrot. The colour of the vegetable was originally not orange. Today, you find variants of black, red, yellow, or white colour. The Dutch seem to have liked orange so much that they are said to have changed the predominant colour of the vegetable to orange by selection.

[@uncipaws7643]

@@Eddi.M. That root has different names in German. Karotte, Möhre, Mohrrübe, Gelberübe. While Karotte comes from Latin carota and Greek karoton, Möhre seems to go back to an ancient indogermanic word meaning edible root, Rübe to something similar ... so Mohrrübe combined both of them and Gelberübe clearly comes from the yellow kind.

[@BrennanYoung]

Another good video from Rob. The other thing with blak as "burnt" is that there's carbonization (black) and then after that there's calcification (white). Spent charcoal (i.e. ash) is white, or very pale grey, for example. Some more jargon: Pink and red have the same "hue". "Carrot" in Danish is "gulerød" (yellow root) and "gulrot" in Norwegian, which is interesting because the first cultivated carrots were *purple*. IIRC orange carrots became popular in connection to the protestant reformation ("William of Orange" and all that). I was a bit surprised that "alba" didn't get an outing here, one of many words for "pale" which gives us albumen, album, and proper names like Albus, Alva and Albion. And how about "indigo"? Need a second video!

[@JonathanGillies]

Hello from Alba!!!!!! :D

[@andreaspoppe3124]

In Germany we can say "es grünt" "it greens" to explain the change of colour of trees and nature mainly in may.

[@PMartistStudio]

I am very much enjoying your videos! This colour review was in particular a delight to us and our arty friends 💖✨

[@AlexSvanArt]

In Gerogian language we also have two versions for blue: "blue" (lurji), and light blue which we literally call "sky color" - "cispheri". Actually some colors in our language are descriptions of objects that have those colors: brown - kavispheri (coffee color), orange (surprisingly it's not an orange but a carrot color - "staphilospheri" but sometimes we use "narinjispheri" - comes from narinji - naranja) and pink is "vardispheri" - a color of a rose (same with violet - ia, iispheri). Only basic colors have their own words: black (shavi), white (tetri), red (tsiteli), yellow (kviteli), blue (lurji), green (mtsvane)

[@matchaeylle]

yellow sounds like the Ukrainian word for flowers квіти (kvity)

[@Mackusmwahaha]

@@matchaeylle Ukraine’s national flower is a sunflower so this makes a lot of sense!!

[@matchaeylle]

@@Mackusmwahaha yeah but that word is Соняшник (sonyashnyk)

[@DanielDavis1973]

the g -> y shift in yellow is a pretty standard sound shift in old english. It happened in other words too such as yard. Garden shares the root with yard although it came to us from old Frankish (germanic language) by way of old French. (It's also the source of the gard in norse mythology words like midgard) . Continental germanic languages seem to have mostly shifted the G to a g sound and english went toward a y. Dutch decided to more or less keep the original phonology although even it probably isn't exactly like proto-germanic.

[@ragnkja]

The same shift is seen in many Norwegian words, although not in our word for yellow, which is “gul”.

[@JaredThePiper]

It's also in some german dialects, so "gelb" would be pronounced like "jelb"

[@feliciagaffney1998]

Ah-ha! And this is where we get American yards being the same as British gardens. It never occurred to me that the -ard- is the same in both words. 🤦🏻‍♀️ It's funny how we can look at a word and not see it for its relationship or parts in another. Thank you for this Daniel!

[@louisvictor3473]

The guard and yard bit seems less like an example ofnit happening in English than the differences between old norman and old (pairisian) french. For example, ward(en) and guad(ian). The first set comes from Norman (NR), who pronunced Ws where the old "French" (FR) pronounced an initial GUs, giving us the second set of that pair sound. Hence Guillame (FR) Wiallme (NR) -> Williamn. War from how the normab pronunced guerre (sonmore like werre), and so on. The græg to gray/grey is actually a case of updating spelling right in English. That final G in græg is pretty much pronounced as the y in grey/gray. So while the spelling changed, the sound is basically the same (the whole word itself barely changed pronunciation), and I imagine it was a similar pattern, after they figured to use Y for the semi vowel sounds, the final letters got all swapped to reflect it me thinks.

[@barttemolder3405]

The yoch is alive and kicking in Dutch; it is the way we pronounce the letter G and the the ch combo as well. so '3elo' (yellow) is very much like the Dutch 'geel'. Yard would be gaarde like in boomgaard (literally 'tree-yard' meaning orchard, from ortgeard: (h)ortus-yard. Garden-yard. :-) Another example: en-yonder = du-ginder (archaic) / ginds / daarginds.

[@sagebg]

An amazing educator! Thank you, Rob! A great channel!

[@SmallerLives]

I only found this channel five minutes ago but it is - or you are - already THE BEST THING I have ever seen on KZbin. Instant subscribe!! WIshing you all the very best with what you do.

[@RobWords]

Wahey! Thanks and welcome aboard.

[@tmasan7789]

The greeks described the sky as bronze because the bronze they used was oxidised, having a blue coulour. We are used to the couluor of shiny bronze now, but that has only been recently stabilized that way through industrial proceses.

[@Faustobellissimo]

Why is everybody giving credit to poetic language?

[@SteveBakerIsHere]

@@Faustobellissimo Because - with a little chemistry - we can understand that bronze really was blue-green before modern chemistry. So it WASN'T just poetic. It was undoubtedly the name of the color in everyday speech. But most of the information we get about language comes from writing - and very often poems and such are our most frequent source.

[@Fledhyris]

@@SteveBakerIsHere I saw a similar comment/explanation further up the thread, and disagreed - because your typical ancient Greek sky looks nothing like the colour of verdigris (discoloured bronze). Then I discovered this video Why The Ancient Greeks Couldn't See Blue by AsapSCIENCE which explains what was actually going on! Nothing to do with verdigris, it probably WAS a reference to dark, gleaming bronze - because they didn't have a word or concept for blue, and had to extrapolate to other things, and bizarrely, they would have thought of blue as being closer to black - but maybe a shiny, deep brown-black like bronze which needs polishing, but hasn't fully oxidised. It sounds weird to think of bright blue sky as bronze, it sounded weird to me too until I watched the AsapSCIENCE video, which explains how language changes neurological perception of colours. It's fascinating, and follows on so neatly from this video, give it a watch!

[@SteveBakerIsHere]

@@Fledhyris The color match isn't exact between verdigris and the sky - but it doesn't have to be. In a civilization where there aren't too many blue things to be found - the blue/green color of verdigris is likely to be closer to the color of the sky than any other common substance in the ancient Greek's vocabulary. We make the same error by saying that the sky is blue...it's not remotely blue - it's cyan - a color composed of about 50% green 50% blue. But uncorroded bronze is very definitely BROWN and the sky is about as different from brown as any color you can imagine! I"m very well aware of the neurological thing - but it's not the simplest explanation. I have to disagree with the AsapScience video...the phenomenon they describe does happen - but it's not remotely strong enough to make brown look like cyan.

[@margotmargot4426]

@@Faustobellissimo there was no wikipedia in ancient greece and we should rely on the available sources: poems, drama, epics.

[@IanHsieh]

8:44 Interesting, in Chinese 青 is a word that can be used to descirbe blue, green or black, very similar to haewen. The character for blue 藍 was originally used for the name of the grass that was used to make 青 dyes.

[@eliasross4576]

In Japan the color Aoi 青い is used to describe leaves and traffic lights which are mostly green but also the blue crayons. They also use 'buru-' ブルー for blue instead of Aoi. Interestingly modern Japan uses "orenji" オレンジ in favor of "daidaiiro" 橙色 which describes the color of an orange fruit. Japan has a tendency to favor loan words even for colors over native color words to such an extent it's almost comical.

[@FrogeniusW.G.]

How are those pronounced?

[@thienkimnguyen1260]

@@FrogeniusW.G. ​ 青: qing 藍: lan

[@FrogeniusW.G.]

@@thienkimnguyen1260 Thank you! :) I guess my eyes are qing. A dark blue-green-grey tone. 😄

[@thienkimnguyen1260]

@@FrogeniusW.G. my impression of “qing” is something bright and/ or lush so i don’t think dark shades could be called “qing”, but it’s just my two cents tho because i’m not a native speaker :”>

[@ushadigiacomo7213]

Just found out your channel through the eggcorn. I am fascinated. The videos are great, and the commentaries are amazing. Thanks to all of you!

[@dmsaunders80]

I am so glad to have found this channel! Thank you Rob! I have never before found a person (or channel) with the same obsession for words and etymology as I have. As they say where I came from, "Him's good people." 😂

[@johnbaxter1410]

I think there is something else to say about 'pink'. I've read tat the shape of the petals is where 'pinking shears' comes from; because something that has been cut in the characteristic zig-zag shape is said to have been 'pinked'.

[@johanrunfeldt7174]

Two things: 1: The Swedish word "gren" means branch or twig in english. Another nature word with the same base in PIE. 2: In Swedish the fruit orange is called "apelsin" which means Apple from China. An older Swedish word for the colour orange is "brandgul" which means fire-yellow.

[@achnurso8870]

What do swedes call the little orange Look a likes then germans call them Apfelsinne what has the same root then your apelsin an big apelsin ( an actual orange in british ) is caled orange in german but the e isnt silent but when refering to the color orange the e is silent .

[@johanrunfeldt7174]

@@achnurso8870 That one is called klementin.

[@nthmost]

More on the Orange: in many Mediterranean languages, like Greek and Arabic, they call it "Portulaki" (approximately), meaning "Portugal fruit". And in Greek at least, the word to describe the color orange is also Portukali (πορτοκάλι).

[@achnurso8870]

@@johanrunfeldt7174 Well in Germany klementines are spelled Clementinen And are even smaler than a Apfelsine weird No Word for oranges than in swedish odd but interesting

[@achnurso8870]

@@johanrunfeldt7174 but in german we say Klementine to an orange hybrid forgot what the orange is paired with Butt the result tastes the same and is smaler than an apfelsine

[@firespacecostarica9303]

in turkish, turuncu is orange and seems to be the only language I know where the colour comes before the fruit, which is called portakal(what derives from Portugal)

[@EdwardCullen667]

I find all this stuff fascinating!! I’d love to see a similar video on the etymology of the Celtic languages, being so close to England (especially when you were talking about the colour red and how most European languages have a very similar word, however in Welsh it’s “Coch” which looks completely different) so intrigued to know where these came from 😊

[@nickinlondon4644]

Hi Rob, another great video. Thank you. Two points: (i) although we no longer use 'swart', the adjective 'swarthy' which derives from it is in common usage; and (ii) you might be interested to know that in Japan, until recently they did not recognise green as a separate colour, and called green things blue. So although they now have the word 'midori' for green, they still say that apples, or vegetables (for instance) are blue ('ao' or 'aoi' - the former being the noun and the latter the adjective), or that the green traffic light is blue. Not only that, but they also call some grey things 'blue', such as the grey heron, which they call the blue heron! But the weirdest thing of all is that they use their word for blue to mean someone who is inexperienced, just like we say someone is green. I don't know about you, but I find that fascinating!

[@veroniquejeangille8248]

In French, an inexperienced newcomer is called "un bleu" ;-), mostly in Universities

[@Rocketsong]

If they use Blue for fruit, then that last makes sense. Someone who is Green is "unseasoned", or not ready, like green wood, or underripe fruit.

[@JonathanGillies]

In Scottish Gaelic, we describe vegetation as 'blue' ('gorm'), instead of 'green' ('uaine'). 😎 Also interesting to note that in English, black cattle are called 'blue', and brown cattle are called 'red'.

[@robertahlen4199]

No dessert until you finish your blues :)

[@QuirqUK]

Vietnamese has the same word for blue and green, xanh. As I understand it, you know which it should be from either context, or additional words/syllables that modify it.

[@SecretSquirrelFun]

My childhood friend’s parents were from Spain and he was born shortly after they arrived in Australia. My friend’s mother began learning English at the same time as he was learning to talk, learn his colours and the sounds of things. You know, the usual stuff that little kids first learn. Anyway, it was at this time, as his mother was learning English, that she was teaching her son his colours. Somewhere along the way she mixed up the English word for two of those colours; orange and green. Obviously at some later time, and as my friend got older, he corrected this mix up, but for the rest of his life, occasionally he would say the wrong word. He’d always correct himself immediately but it’s because of that formative mix up he still does it today. I’ve always loved this story. Thanks for sharing this information with me and thanks for the memories. Much appreciated 🙂🐿❤️🌈👍🏽 Also, as a kid his father would always only speak to him in Spanish and his mum only in English. I remember when as a kid I’d visit that this bilingual household really fascinated me and I always loved hearing my friend talk Spanish with his father.

[@BrennanYoung]

bilingual (and multilingual) families raise native semioticians

[@ericpaul4575]

What is your favorite color? Orange. No Greeeeeeeeeeeeeen.

[@jolenethiessen357]

It *is* fascinating listening to kids from multi-lingual households flip like that. One of the coolest things I ever heard was once when my kids played soccer (football) there were several South African kids on their team (we have a large white South African expat community here). The kids would speak to the other kids with perfect Canadian English accents, but then turn to their parents and speak SA English. Then flip back to their Canadian accents with their friends. All in English, but 2 very different dialects!

[@mikejones-go8vz]

I stayed with a family in Yvoire, the mother was German, father Irish, lived in France, the kids spoke all three languages sometimes in the same sentence , it was fascinating and bizarre at the same time.

[@geroutathat]

@@mikejones-go8vz It's likely thats the Irish influence. The French hate that they are really snooty, and the germans are not fond of it, but Irish speakers do it all the time. The closest I can get as to why they flip like that, is they have two dialects of English, so if they are an Irish speaker they actually know 3 languages, and the hiberno-english dialect lets them bridge and switch without creating a pidgin language.

[@Experternas]

ive watched a bunch of your vids. i had no idea language would be interesting to me but it is. but particulary origins. i'd love to see you do more latin or greek origins of words. it opens up a new understanding for me. good stuff.

[@DankWish]

very entertaining as always, love puns and word play that accompanies your lessons. Great work

[@davidgould9431]

7:11 "there are no blue flowers that haven't been made that way by human intervantion". Bluebells are definitely blue and wild; so are speedwells; over in the Himalayas there are meconopsis, which are poppy-like flowers that are often blue. There are shedloads of wild flowers that, to my eye, look more blue than purple, which is where the problem lies, I suspect: where to draw the line between the different colours.

[@bigscarysteve]

Are bluebirds rare in the UK? Or non-existant?

[@aramisortsbottcher8201]

@@bigscarysteve I don't know for England, but here in Germany there are atleast partly blue birds. Some ducks have blue feathers aswell as the "kingfisher".

[@davidgould9431]

@@bigscarysteve Here in the UK, we have kingfishers, which have a good bit of blue on them. You'll also see flashes of blue on jays. There aren't any completely blue birds as far as I can tell. That's if you ignore imported ones: for example, budgerigars, which only get to be blue through breeding in any case.

[@michaelmoore7975]

Not only but also.....purple does not exist in the visible electromagnetic spectrum.

[@riverAmazonNZ]

Yes speedwells were my first thought. Bluebells lean toward purple arguably.

[@andysleeper1283]

In Vietnamese, the same word (xanh) is used for all shades of blue and green. They add descriptive words (leaf, sky, water) for specific shades. Your discussion of blue in Greek is consistent with other languages too.

[@fthurman]

that reminds me of the word 'glas' in Welsh, which is also used for blue and green.

[@longpinkytoes]

a yi a yi ay. little butterfly. green black and blue like the colours of the sky :D 青空 Aozora - Blue Skies is very nearly azura too :0

[@JWRogersPS]

@@fthurman Indeed! And the other word in Welsh that is often used for the color green in translations (gwyrdd) really means "unripe".

[@felicitygee381]

Do I vaguely remember that the Japanese word for green midori is much older than blue, aoi? Can anyone else confirm?

[@JonathanGillies]

@@JWRogersPS In Scottish Gaelic, we describe vegetation as 'blue' ('gorm'), instead of 'green' ('uaine'). 😎 And 'glas' means 'grey'!!!!!

[@joskaemck5784]

As someone from the Netherlands, it’s interesting to see that our language still has many elements of old English/Dutch . Many words haven’t changed much, the last hundreds of years.

[@roodborstkalf9664]

Inderdaad, Nederlands is minder veranderd dan Engels.

[@chocolatasm1255]

I am native bilingual Dutch English and it always amazes me, and at the same time does not amaze me, the connection between our languages

[@Rapper_skull]

In Italian we also have "celeste", a lighter blue than "azzurro", representing the color of the clear sky (from "cielo" = sky).

[@Androbott]

en español azul y celeste and celeste es very popular

[@elsonck2523]

sounds like yellow? lol

[@DominiqueB]

Ah! Grazie, very interesting -- the famous Italian bike manufacturer Bianchi is well know for its very distinctive signature color, "celeste blue". I never realized the English term actually was a correct adaptation of the original, not just some flight of fancy from some marketing director.

[@maccaveen]

I'm currently paused after the grey/gray bit, to comment on an older video because as a Canadian I have an interesting anecdote. Due to our proximity to the States, we are constantly consuming media writen by Americans. I was raised in schools learning the stressed Canadian-ness of our spelling, but culturally Canada was using Zee more and more often than Zed. I had issues with spelling, still do won't lie, so I had to be taught tricks to make distinctions between Canadian and American spellings of words, and the one for grey is one that I still use to this day. Gray is American because it has an A, grey is the King's English because it has an E in it (obviously it was the Queen's English when I was a kid) Just thought it was funny and relevant :)

[@rahuldhargalkar]

Ingenious!

[@noahdoss1967]

As a Californian I can say we were also taught both gray or grey

[@PMA65537]

CambridgE has the MagdalenE College and Oxford has the Magdalen College. Protons and neutrons are made of Up and Down quarks. Using alphabetical order; neutron comes before proton. ddu comes before duu. Dromedary camels have one hump like letter D. Bactrian camels have 2 humps like letter B.

[@rava67]

I'm American and I stubbornly spell it "grey." I just think it looks better. :D

[@nthgth]

Lost in the Pond talked about this recently. Think it's a YT short but the point is, 90% of the comments were people saying some variety of "I'm in the US and I spell it grey all the time" or "I just use both internally interchangeably." Side note, I think they both work so perfectly because the way to pronounce a long A (like in gray) is identical to a short E then a long E (or a... sideways I or Y like enemy or the Spanish y). Eh, ee. But real fast and no pause.

[@marisaGDoliveira]

Hello! New subscriber here and I gotta say that, some times, I really be questioning all collective existence and you’re just simply answering all my questions 🤌🏼 thank you from Portugal! (Btw, in February it is usually pretty sunny here, since it’s right around the corner of Spring time!)

[@waluigihentailover6926]

I like your personality! You have a neat way with words.

[@mariakehr-raggay2658]

"Purpur" is actually still used in German today to describe that deep red/purple colour that was commonly worn by nobility/cardinals etc. in medieval times and also is part of the names of lots of animals/plants that have purple colours... To just describe simple purple, it's "lila" in German.

[@korana6308]

same in russian language

[@SwordQuake2]

And mostly the same in Bulgarian.

[@yccmzimmy]

Same thing in Italian with the word “porpora” indicating a specific colour among the various kind of “viola”

[@fannn7466]

French also has this distinction, with "violet" being the most common one, and "pourpre" describing that rich red-purple colour.

[@lfhaneman]

Also - why did writers decide to transpose letters, with purpel suddenly being spelled purple (English). What govered that shift?

[@theharper1]

Midori (green) is a very recent colour in Japanese, to the point where traffic lights are a blue shade of green and people say that the lights turn blue instead of green. Apparently Japanese people used to call trees blue as well. 🤔

[@ethoatom668]

That explains why the city of Aomori (meaning "blue forest") is called that way.

[@anton2156g]

Thank you very much! Your work is a pure enjoyment.

[@sarahwillis4304]

I've found your videos quite fascinating will you be doing any videos on old English origins of flowers and plant life or anything similar?

[@Joseph_Roffey]

Cyan and magenta are my fave hues because they seem to have popped up to explain printer ink as though they were words people had always been using

[@no1fanofthepals]

Albanian also has the distinction between blue and azure - 'blu' and 'kaltër' respectively. Our words for yellow and green are sort of swapped to English as 'verdhë' is yellow and 'gjelbër' is green (a natural green - unnatural greens like traffic lights are 'jeshil' from turkish). 'Verdhë' is similar to the French 'vert' because they both come from Latin 'viridis' and 'gjelbër' which comes from Latin 'galbinus' (yellow - similar to German 'gelb').

[@josephcoon5809]

I believe the state, Vermont, is a portmanteau of verde (verdant; green) and mountain.

[@michellebyrom6551]

Gelb, geld and gild are similar, geld being an old, German origin word for gold.

[@michellebyrom6551]

@@josephcoon5809 lots of places in the US have French roots. If you look at place names from Native American languages, you'll notice they're spelt with a French ear. I believe the vote on which language would be official, English or French, by the Founding Father's was very close.

[@josephcoon5809]

@@michellebyrom6551 Well, ‘verdant’ is a descendant of the Latin ‘viridis’, and the Founders were fond of Latin, so I would say any French region in the area with French roots in their name would actually be rooted in Latin. I’m sure the vote reflects how much they didn’t want to create schisms while also understanding that having a common unifying language was important. The sprinklings of Latin phrases almost seems like an attempt to establish a foundation common to both English and French. Your point is taken, though.

[@Mertiy7]

Fun fact about Turkish "yeşil" (green): it has the same root as the words "yaş" (wet), "yaşam" (life), "yaşa-" (to live) and "ışık" (light)

[@DrinkingStar]

I am fascinated by all your videos about words. As a result, I decided to subscribe.

[@jimbrown5552]

Thanks again for sharing

[@helenwelton1760]

When I was a small child at infant school in the 1950s learning to spell my mild dyslexia was undiagnosed and I was often subject to bullying and humiliation from teachers believing that I was lazy and hadn’t done my homework so I really wish your vlogs had been available then to help me as they would have made such a difference ❤

[@Mockingbird_Taloa]

The way people think about colour (or rather, how what language they speak encourages them to think) is as fascinating as there are ways languages describe colour! You did a good job making the long, complex etymologies of such common words accessible. In my people's language, Chahta, bright blue and bright green are grouped together as one colour (okchako), and pale/dusky/dark blues and greens considered another (okchamali). Since most Chahta folk now speak English primarily, there has kinda been a shift in matching our words to the English categories, but the old use is still retained. It makes sense for where our homelands are--colours in a bayou or swamp are dark or desaturated under the cover of the trees; a sunny sky is bright like new the underbrush and grass in open woods and savannas. The only stretch of water likely to be 'blue' is the Gulf of Mexico--but even then if it is blue, the shade is either bright like the sky and trees, or dark and murky like the Mississippi and the bayous. Also, we do not have a word for "colours" as a category--because our colour words are primarily *verbs,* not nouns! It's hard to explain because English is noun-based, and Chahta (like most Indigenous languages of Turtle Island) is verb-based, but you cannot ask "what colour is it?" Instead, you ask something like "what is it doing looking?" or "how is it made to be seen?" Since there is no 'blue' the way Indo-European languages think of blue, purple (homakbi) is seen as being related to red (homma), but distinct like pink is in English. Lakna covers both yellow and 'rust' shades of what English would term 'orange,' but other shades of orange are covered by the phrase 'lakna hata' (lit. "pale/dusky yellow"). I think that distinction comes from the idea that some orange things have a deeper, less 'yellow' colour in dusky/low light situations than they do in the bright sun.

[@JonathanGillies]

Thanks for that interesting information!!!!! In Scottish Gaelic, we describe vegetation as 'blue' ('gorm'), instead of 'green' ('uaine'). 😎

[@pedrovitor5125]

Amazing explanations ❤ 🎉🎉🎉

[@cb73]

Love this stuff! I’ve questioned word origins, particularly color, since as long as I can remember. Also, you should have worn a different color shirt for each color you discussed lol😂

[@andrewhamp2893]

You could definitely do a part 2: cyan, chartreuse, magenta, indigo. Magenta definitely has an interesting etymological story. Also, azure as a lighter shade of blue and pink as a lighter shade of red is contentious. 😊 Love the thing about children having difficulty with describing the colour of the sky.

[@Faustobellissimo]

As an Italian, I can confirm that the sky is referred to as "celeste" or "azzurro" ("sky blue" or "azure" in English). But these are NOT simply lighter shades of blue. By blue we mean a pure deep intense blue, while azure and sky blue are actually mixtures of blue, cerulean and cyan.

[@suprememasteroftheuniverse]

Pink not light red. Only Stu.... kids would say that. Also clearly ancient Greek had kianos for blue. This is channel is showing daily that's BS.

[@aGGeRReS]

@@Faustobellissimo As a speaker of two Slavic languages I couldn't agree more. Like, open your eyes, those are two different colors, not just the intensity variation of one. Take a pallet of watercolors and try dissolving blue to match sky-blue (azure). This will never happen.

[@aGGeRReS]

@@suprememasteroftheuniverse 100% its not. For anyone reading this: take any pallet of paint and try dissolving red to match pink. Or try converting pink into dark-pink. Will it become red? Absolutely not.

[@popplejam2128]

@@Faustobellissimo so basically, azzurro and blue are like blue and cyan in english? because cyan isn’t blue, yet so many people refer to most shades of cyan as blue or green, and sometimes get confused and call it a “blue-green” just like how orange was “yellowred” for so long. color language clearly still has a ways to go in English. but what’s interesting is it isn’t just English, i don’t know too much but i’ve vaguely heard about several other languages that don’t differentiate blue, cyan, and green. i believe japanese started using the word “midori” (i only know it how to spell it in the english alphabet, i don’t know any hiragana, katakana or kanji) fairly recently? previously they just used aoi, which is blue, and temporarily were using “gurinu” which is derived from the same as green. and i believe i heard of an african language having words for different shades of green, but one of the words for green also meant blue, and blue doesn’t have its own word.

[@davidgould9431]

7:42 According to the oracle (well, Wikipedia), Homer's οἶνοψ πόντος literally means 'wine-eyed' or 'wine-faced' and often applies to rough seas. One idea is that it isn't a description of the colour at all, but is describing the sea as drunk and unruly. Sounds plausible but, in the absence of any idea about ancient Greek, I can't say one way or the other.

[@sagesovereign4686]

Thank you for incredible work

[@goldmole1]

In Dutch geblakerd, from blakeren translates into scorched according to the Dutch-English dictionary. So i assumed it to relate to black / blackening. But when i looked it up in the etymological dictionary it was mentioned to be derived from flickering, burning bright.

[@Old.Fashioned.Lover.]

I'm a native English speaker, and this channel is such a great thing for me, how interesting and enjoyable it is 🤍

[@okamichamploo]

9:49 Don't forget Brown. I came to the realization recently that Brown is really just dark orange. Explaining why Japan, where I live seems to have no native word for it, and just adopted it later I assume from some western countries as literally "tea color" despite the most widely drank local tea being green.

[@noahdoss1967]

In fairness I steep my green tea so long it's brown anyway

[@hanzquejano7112]

When I was a kid, I always saw a mud puddle as "orange colored" but everyone kept calling them brown which puzzled me.

[@slycordinator]

Also consider that traditional medicine in east Asia has usually taken the form of herbal teas that often are brownish.

[@nthgth]

It's "orange with context." Really it's basically how apparently Italians think azure isn't just bright/electric blue.

[@nix-consulting]

A similar thing occurs in Chinese, regarding the colour blue. In ancient Chinese, references to blue used the word "qing", such as qingtian meaning blue sky. However, qing can also mean green, such as the word qingwa, meaning frog or qingjiao, meaning green pepper. Qing itself described a greyish blue/green (jade like) colour that can be found in early Chinese ceramics. Similar to Greek, the word for bronze is qingtong (green copper). I can only surmise that the colour referred to the green patina that develops on bronze rather than the colour of the metal itself. As such, I would suggest the same reasoning for Greek skies.

[@pohjanvanamo]

Oh, this makes sence!

[@_Tree_of_Life_]

Do the Chinese call their green traffic lights "blue", as the Japanese do? Even though they know they are green? 🚦🤔

[@AdeleiTeillana]

@@_Tree_of_Life_ No, it's still a green light, not a blue light. The word for green is very different from qing (green is lǜ) and blue is also very different (lán). The characters are also written very differently 绿 (green - lǜ) and 蓝 (blue - lán).

[@danvol3835]

@@_Tree_of_Life_ Ah, but the Japanese also refer to many "green" things as "blue," especially in relation to plants. I couldn't back it up, but I suspect that earlier Japanese language must not have used the term for green as often, in favor of using the word for blue to cover a range from yellowish-green through blue.

[@flogiston824]

Very interesting. I wonder if there is a connection between the origin and/or pronunciation of the Chinese word "qingtian" and English word "gentian", which is a flower that is commonly an intense blue colour.

[@bjm1711]

Brilliant presentation!

[@brostelio]

Thabks! I often wondered about words like "swarthy " and "gilded", and this video really clarified!

[@matebsp]

I'm always amazed by the etymology of words, we never stop to realize how words are so similar. The blank and blanc one blew my mind 🤯 In portuguese we say "branco" and black is "preto".

[@peterc6156]

Me too! The only reason I'm responding is because a few days ago, I was wondering where the word "nickname" came from. And up above, someone explained it. I'm fasciated by all things language, but especially etymology.

[@dimasgomez]

Vale dizer que o branco da cinza veio da queima, que faz o preto da fuligem, o pretume do queimado, torrado, preto carvão. -- Clearly, white comes from ash, which is produced by burning, which gives black fumes, burnt blackness, burned out black, coal black. (It was a hard spot to translate my easy-rolling poetical Portuguese 🤭😅😪 Not percect, but acceptable. I'm sure there is a word for burnt out black 🤔)

[@kevinolive]

back in the late 70s, my mom worked at a wallpaper and paint store. mixing paint back then required knowledge of "recipes" for colored paints. one of the things that mom frequently encountered were people asking for light red and she'd mix it up and they'd complain that it was pink. she only did that a few times before she'd ask if they wanted pink and if not, they were in a pickle.

[@cynthiakeller5954]

I bet that pickle was green too!

[@deanniematheson1062]

i know what they mean though... "light" red to most people means a bright, clear, not muddy, red that sits toward the yellow side of the spectrum, but not enough to be called orange. a red with no blue tones.

[@fthurman]

it's interesting to me, but as a tetrachromat, I'd describe 'light red' and 'pink' as being two distinct colours. Light red is warmer shade of neutral red, where as pink is a a lighter shade of read which possess a slightly cooler, more blueish, tone.

[@terranovarubacha5473]

Light red is only pink if you make it light by mixing it with white, making it a pastel. Consider tinting clear plastic with different amounts of red dye and you'll get an idea of what these folks were after. You can now buy house paint that has a clear base and doesn't pastel but it's a bit of a specialty item still

[@NNnn-zc2bm]

@@fthurman that is interesting. The colour you describe as light red would be orange red to me. Light red would be a very dark pink. And pink would have no bluish hue to it, otherwise I would consider it lilac.

[@user-gx7rn6jn7o]

Cyan (for the sky) is the first color word my kid learned. She learned the basic color wheel before she was 4, and she even knew nuanced colors like khaki & taupe. She enjoyed blowing the minds of adults with her color vocabulary.

[@ianfenwick5189]

Fabulous. Love these vids.