as a lot of you have spotted, this is my first video like this. been making content on TikTok for 5 years and this is my first KZfaq visual essay attempt - to see it get 16k views has just blown my mind. Thank you for watching (and for the audio advice 😅) I can’t wait to make you more stuff. Let me know what you’d like to watch!!!

In Italian we say “blu” for the English “dark blue” and “celeste” or “azzurro for the English “light blue”, in fact they are two distinct colors for us. I am not sure, but I suspect it is similar for other Latin-derived languages.

To put it another way, _all_ colour names that you use in everyday life are umbrella terms. Green is green until we need to distinguish lime green and emerald green, in which case languages tend to pick the easiest visual reference. The coolest revelation for me though was that basic colour words are not like objects you can point to, they're fuzzy ranges with artificial boundaries that vary between cultures. The rainbow could have 2 colours, or 6, or 10, or 20 depending on how many times you think it's important to split it

Literally the entire germanic language family does this

Bizarrely in modern greek they use a variation on the germanic word μπλε or blé (said like the french word for wheat) but in ancient greek they used a word closer to cyan

I adore finding a channel that will grow to millions of subs as it begins. Solid work

In my language, Polish, dark blue is called "granat". It's the same word as name garnet gem (who is red) and pomegranate fruit (also red), and grenade explosive (usually not red). In history Poland imported indigo blue pygment from India and thus was packed crushed to small pebble-like particles. This fraction was called "pomme-granate blue" and this name was shortened to "granat". Name of one from types pygment later become a name of colour.

In India, blue is called 'Neel' that comes from 'Neela'. Neela is the Sanskrit word for Blue Sapphire, which is a highly precious and potent gemstone found in India and Sri Lanka. Look it up, it's spectacular 🧿

Regarding green v.s. blue, In Japan, we call the green traffic light 'blue'. Granny Smith apple is called the blue apple (青リンゴ). We also call unripe fruits on the tree as blue. Furthermore, most of us Japanese are born with a Mongolian blue spot on our bottom or lower backside, which disappears in about 5 years. So, when we see an immature person, we say "he is still blue bottomed".

Ms. Violet Beauregard teaching us about the color blue.

interesting how in Català we use the same word as the Old Germanic "Blau" and it's pronounced the same way as well

Filipinos use “azul” from Spanish too! We also use Bughaw as another blue name

Hello, Sophia. "Blue" in Indonesian is "Biru" which originally comes from "(ma-)biʀaw" in Proto-Malayo-Polynesian and in Proto-Malayic called "biru". And also found in Malaysian Malay and Bruneian Malay. Although some Austronesian languages turned "(ma-)biʀaw" which means "blue" into "biru" or "bilu", some are pronounced differently. For examples: in Tagalog/Filipino called "bughaw" and Makasar is called "gaw'" which is a cognate of the Tagalog word "bughaw". So, that's my explanation.....

In Czech, blue is modrý, modrá, modř etc. depending on the context. And interestingly, a bruise is called "modřina", so you can see the connection there too 😁

This is absolutely fascinating, I'm so pleased I've found your content! Looking forward to the next colour

your voice is panned all the way to the left, you might wanna put it in mono.

This is incredible! You are amazing ❤

This video is so epic and well done. Please continue this series.

Brillant explanations! Thank you so much! I‘m looking foreward to more excellent clips from your channel! Greetings from Switzerland

One of the things which threw me when learning Russian was the use of two blues and two words for what we would have one. Dark blue and light blue are different colours.

The French association with bleu unfortunately clouds that both blãw in Old English and blå/Blau in other Germanic languages, come from blēwaz in Proto Germanic. It seems reasonable that blue in English is not blue because of French, but in fact, despite French.

Your voice is awesome. Great video!

Great video; very interesting - well done 👍

Came over from your insta SSG, reckon this vid is your breakthrough moment, brill content too keep it up 🔥

Superb! This was a marvellous video, the aesthetics, the atmosphere, the quality, the incredible pronunciation of the host in the different languages…this video in KZfaq it’s definitely a tiny piece of gold in between the mud of the “mine”. Thank you for being generous with the quality and dedication! We need more things like this in the world

Nice touch with the blue nail polish…

What kind of Tom Scott is this?

? Such elevated production values at the start of a channel can only mean good things for the future. Subbed.

And on top of all that it gives your armor special properties 😮

Fascinating overview and etymology 😊❤

What a lovely linguistic, history amd art lesson rolled into one😊

Give this woman her own show I could watch this about all the colours !!! Brilliant stuff 👏

Thank you YT algo for finding this video and creator. Excellent video.

Interesting video! I do love learning about word origins and proto-Indoeuropean stuff. I have often wondered about the blue/azure split. It's also great to see the part about using it in paintings. To us today that's just a nice blue mantle but with the context of how much it cost, it takes on a whole new meaning.

That was fascinating!

This was such a wonderful watch, Sophia. I feel cultured and as if I've transcended (hello that music?)

Hi. Thank You very much for that nice video. It was very informative and very professional. The audio is good (even if a bit unbalanced). The music from 4:47 on stunned me, What is the name of that piece of music?

This just a tangent on the subject but long ago we called black men like African "Blue men" or in our language (Swedish) "blåmän" or "blaman" which adds to the confusion of blue I guess. In old nordic it was blámaðr. Afrika was called : "Blåland".

Here is how I got here. Just got into fountain pens, looking for the most pure blue ink, found a video about Lapis Lazuli being turned into fine inks, now you. Couldn’t be happier how the algorithm got me here. Have you done one on Phoenician Purple? Originally the dye came from processing predatory sea snails from Carthage. This is the first video of yours I’ve seen, excited to see what else is here.

great video ❤️

We say plav/a/o in Serbian but we also have an added descriptor for a shade of tropical sea blue, azuran/rna/rno.

OK, if all your vids are as good as this I have ro subscribe.🎉

According to Newton’s roygbiv, blue is what we call cyan. Indigo is what we call blue.

@1:43 the reference to blue in the Qur'an [20 : 102] "yawma yunfakhu fis-suri wanahshur ul-muj'rimeena yawma-idhin zur'qa" (On the Day when the Trumpet is blown-We will gather the sinners on that Day, blue) The word الْمُجْرِمِیْنَ \Mujrimeen\criminals or sinners (not infidels, which is a Christian, not Islamic, concept) who are described as زُرْقًا \Zurqa\blue.

Super cool video, I always wondered about why English was unique in this sense! Only a small thing, I think it would probably be better if you recorded voices mono and not stereo. It's kind of distracting to have voices come from the left or the right all of a sudden depending on the mic's position.

Glas - blue or (in older Welsh) green. Presumably then also in brythonic. I'm surprised you didn't mention this, as it means the concept of blue as a distinct colour was brought to Britain by the Germanic tribes and wasn't previously here.

Most interesting and enjoyable.

In Ancient Greek the name of the colour blue is _κυανόν_ /ky.anón/ (n.) which comes from the adjective _κύανος_ /ký.anοs/ = *enamel, lapis lazuli, blue copper carbonate* which has an unclear etymology. It could be either a loanword from Hittite, _kuu̯anna(n)-_ = *blue as copper* (likely), or an original IE word from PIE *ḱwn̥Ho- (unlikely). Since the Byzantine era, the name _κυανόν_ has come to describe the *dark blue colour* which explains why in Modern Greek we borrowed from French the word _μπλε_ /ble/ (n. indeclinable) for *blue*

After watching this video. I went on a hunt for related videos. I came across a video about a similarly valuable pigment Tyrian Purple and I was curious about color terms for purple. On another tangential note, could you do a video about the ways languages describe rainbows? I can imagine a large derivation on that term. Link to an interesting Tyrian Purple: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/f7yIpMykrZy6lYE.htmlsi=YkrKwp5nNyRRAT_T

I like how Sophia went all the way to wear blue jacket, blue hair band and even blue nail polish to honour the colour blue!

Ya I like this and the fit is fire

Funnily enough we describe our optical colour sensors - the "cones" in the retina of the eye having sensitivity in the red, green and blue parts of the spectrum of white light. In fact the Red cones have 2 sensitivity peaks in the red and violet parts of the spectrum. The overwhelming light that we get is actually sky blue, or the light from the sky which varies in colour during the day from very dark blue-black when the sky lightens before dawn to the vibrant light blue of a cloudless summers day. This is caused by scattering of light by the molecules in the atmosphere. There are other light sensors in the eye, the "rods", whose peak sensitivity is between sky blue, and blue-green (duck-egg blue, or cyan). These cells act as comparators of brightness and act from the brightest daytime to help distinguish objects in the shadows (indirectly illuminated by reflections of the sky), and when light conditions are changing after the sun goes down, when there is little colour information received by the eye.

interesting but in my op. there are some imprecisions: in Italian azzurro and blu are separate colours - even if they are both interpreted as "blu". Also "blue as the colour of transcendency" I am not really sure (not sure blue is "calming" either). Colours have different meanings in different cultures: in Egypt/Babylon blue was associated with divinity, yes! In other cultures together with white was linked to the dead. The colour associated with divinity in China is yellow and for the greeks or the romans the divine colour is purple - and purple for us is not what purple is for germanic peoples, we clearly distinguish violet and purple. Also all colours are determined by how the light interacts with the surface, not just blue.

Good job with the Mandarin word "qing". You even got the tone correct.

In Latvia we call it "zils" 🔵

There's a reason one of the popular shades of blue in English is royal blue.

Hearing that English blue comes from an older root that effectively means "bright" is so funny when you take into account that the Norse cognate, blár, which gave rise to the modern words for blue in the Scandinavian languages (blå), used to basically mean "dark blue, black, a dark color", and Norse sea travelers referred to dark-skinned North Africans as "blámaðr" (literally "blue-man"). Funny how the same root diverged in meaning, but somehow ended up meaning basically the same thing! (Modern Scandinavian languages, like English, do not have distinct words for light and dark blue in everyday language, unlike Romance languages.)

Afghanistan is normally called as a source, but it was also mined in neighboring Tajikistan. Was just there recently, and it's used it a lot of the lavish architecture and shown in the historical artifacts in the museum. Much of the blue famously used in Babylon also came from this region.

nice treat for your left ear.

In Slovene we have Plava related to Blau/Blue which may also mean fair or light colour as in blond hair, fair sky. Another is Modra which the orogin is related to water and deoths of it, but is most commonly used, also used for "wise". If someone is wise they are "blue" also "that is a blue thought.", "you speak blueness. " Last one I know is sinji, which means bright and shining, mostly for light blues, sky, eyes. Another I found but havent heard in use anymore is Višnjev, literally "sour cherry coloured" Most probably because sour cherries stain skin and cloth blue.

In 1Q84 there's a character called Aomame, as in "green peas", but if you Googled it you'd find that "ao" actually means blue. So I guess this explains it.

Gorrym in Manx Gaelic. (And similar I'm sure in Scottish and Irish Gaelic)

In Turkish the Arabic mavi is blue and for dark blue we use the Persian lacivert; more over the old word for blue is gök which means sky. Interestingly it also been used for the colour gray. Must mention that the word boz which is used to refer to the shades of brown also been used to describe to the colour of the sky in even older sources.

My left ear loved this video

In art school, there is a palette color called "azure", a greenish somewhat paler blue than the lazuli/pthalo blue

The same with the Turkic languages. We up until recently in historical scale called both the green and the blue color "kok" and later reflecting to the worldwide demond of distinguishing the two we started using "green" as yashyl, and "blue" as "kok"

So what is the Gaelic word for blue There are more than just a few English phrases to denote how we share that color with our children.

I am learning Scottish Gaelic, and as an Italian, I was confused by GORM meaning both green and blue. Now I know why!

In Thai we called light blue, "Fah"(meaning Sky) and we called darker blue as "Nam Ngeon"(meaning Silver Liquid) Also the words for blues are very recent. As many elders still called em green (which covered the shades in between emerald to indigo)

I am pretty sure that Italians do not use "azurro" for blue. Blue and azurc is as different to them as red and pink is to English speakers. Spanish azul appears more as an outller rather than the English blue.

You can still buy genuine ultramarine blue paint BUT it is about £100 for 40 ml

2:38 I mean. But that is surprising. Because we didn't know that until much later after the color was named. You can't apply evidence backwards like that lol

"Why do two different languages have two different words for the same thing?"

This has nothing to do with the subject at hand, so youse feel free to ignore this. However I had to put my headphones on backwards (R earphone on my left ear, L earphone on my right) when she started talking to Dr Joanna Russell, cos Sophia's voice was coming through my L earphone and vice versa so because it didn't match visually it annoyed me 😆

good pronunciation of Arabic and Persian words

why is the sound so off?

how do they call blue sapphire in India?

I really enjoy this show and you remind me of the girl who says "I want an Ooompa Loompah now" in Willy Wonka.Thats one of the things I like about you

Beautiful! Who knew?

Peculiar that Russian word sinii also originates from a word that meant bright and shiny (siyat'), especially when referred to lightning

*cyan* is a mixture of green and blue... Interesting video

My slavic language (Bosnian) calls the colour "plava" which I'm pretty sure has a same origin as blue.

In Lithuanian, it is melynas from the Greek melas for black or dirty

i love your outfit. blue is my favorite color so, 🥰👍

Am I missing something? Blue from Blau (German).

In the Philippines an Austronesian nation. We also called blue as " asul "

"Asul" has become very common in Filipino, although we sometimes use the Tagalog word, "bughaw."

I'm red-green colour blind, and blue is one of the few colours I can see properly. There are shades of red and green which I get confused, but blue is never in doubt. Blue stands out for me in anything I see, whereas most other colours are various shades of muddiness

In the Netherlands and other Dutch speaking countries we called blue "blauw"

You should have a history channel show. Except history channel circa 2000 because it blows in recent years...so maybe a Nebula or Wondrium show

In my language, bulgarian and as well as some other slavic languages we call blue синьо sinуo , so I wonder where that comes from .

Actually I call it green, color history joke. I recently found out other cultures didn't even have a word to distinguish blue and green for the longest time.

I always thought it odd that blue was not named sky. Granted in England it might be grey more... but from what I can tell...even in warm climates sky was not used. ... Blue as a garmet color is interesting..

The ancient Picts painted their bodies blue to radiate calm and peacefulness.

Blue is a sublime color.

Funny, the first word for blue in Persian, the mother tongue of Dari is, آبی, ab'i, which refers to water, more precious than any color stone.

It's Dylnoaperxan in Chudistani

To me blue is often just a generic term for all its different shades just like all the specific color names because in just casual everyday talk ,people can bea bit lazy and not give its specific name color,say like ultramarine blue or burnt umbre

❤

Gotta call it something