Colours


Every language in the world has its own quirks and funny little ways of expressing itself. Read more about how colours are expressed in different languages around the world ...

Most people around the world can perceive the amazing array of different colours that exist ... however, different languages do not consider the basic colours to be the same! When it comes to describing those colours in words something strange (at least to our English-speaking ears) can happen.


In English we are used to dividing the colour spectrum into eleven categories: white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple and grey. We can describe even more colours but they will be considered to be shades of those eleven colours.

All languages have words for white and black. In fact, for some languages, such as some New Guinea Highland languages, these are the only colour words that they have. If a language only has three words for colours, then those colours will always be white, black and red. If a fourth colour is added it will always be either green or blue. If there are five colours, those colours will be white, black, red, green and yellow.

When we see light blue and dark blue, we still consider both colours as being blue, and can describe them both simply as blue if we don't need to differentiate them. However, in some languages, such as Greek and Russian, there is traditionally no one single colour "blue" that covers both light and dark blue. In Greek, you choose either γαλάζιο (ghalázio, light blue) or μπλε (ble, dark blue). Hungarian has the same differentiation with the colour red. You choose between bordó (dark red) or piros (lighter red).

On the other hand, Vietnamese and Navajo are examples of languages that only have one word that covers both green and blue. In Vietnamese, the colour xanh describes both the colour of the blue sky and a green leaf. If you need to differentiate, then blue can be called xanh da trời (sky xanh, light blue) or xanh dương (ocean blue, darker blue) or xanh lá cây (leaf xanh, green). Even in Japanese and Korean, a green traffic light is called a "blue" light.

Some languages may have the same colours as English, but the boundaries are different. For example, traditionally in Welsh there is gwyrdd (green), glas (blue) and llwyd (grey). However, green leaves and green grass are "glas", but a green painted fence would be "gwyrdd". This is because the colour gwyrdd covers non-blueish green, whereas the colour glas covers living green, greenish blue, greyish-blue, and colour llwyd covers grey which is not blueish at all, rather more brownish grey. So a leaf, the sky and the sea can all be described as the colour glas, whereas in English the leaf would be green, the sky blue and the sea grey!

This concept of different types of grey, which may blur into brown, is also found in Spanish where the colour pardo can mean brown or grey depending on what is being referred to. When a bear is pardo it is brown, but when sky is pardo it is grey. But grey metal would be the colour gris.

Basque used to only have the one single colour urdin that covered the three colours green, blue and grey. However, nowadays the word urdin is used for blue, and berde (from Spanish) is used for green, and gris (from Spanish) for grey.