青

[bathrobe]

I have always thought that the Japanese got the color ambiguity from the Chinese usage

I'm rather sceptical; I prefer the George Lakoff analysis cited above. There are apparently a lot of languages that don't make the blue-green distinction. Besides which, basic colour distinctions tend to be pretty fundamental to a language. Would borrowing the character 青 change ordinary people's language?

Still, I certainly wouldn't reject your opinion out of hand. After all, I'm sure Japanese colours have been influenced by exposure to Western languages in the past 100-odd years; the same could have happened a thousand-odd years ago.

For what it's worth, this Wikipedia article claims that the four ancient 原色 (primary colours?) of Japanese were 「アカ」(red),「アヲ」(blue),「シロ」(white),「クロ」(black). ミドリ (green) was included in アヲ(blue).

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%89%B2

[Ian_Lee]

Koreans called their Presidential Palace as Ch’ŏingwa dae (Blue House) -- which in Chinese is 青瓦台.

Maybe Japanese and Koreans use 青 to refer to colors blue/green ambiguously. But in Chinese, I would say gradually blue and green have been separately labeled.

For example, 青海省 is translated as Green Sea Province and not Blue Sea Province.

In Taiwan, the Pan-Blue Camp call themselves as 泛蓝 insted of 泛青 even though its origin is based on 青 from the KMT flag -- 青天白日旗

[bathrobe]

青海省 is translated as Green Sea Province and not Blue Sea Province

I have never seen it translated either way -- just plain old Qinghai province.

However, a Google search of 'qinghai blue sea' and 'qinghai green sea' both turn up lots of results, so it appears it can be glossed either way.

[Altair]

This is an interesting discussion. If I can add two further questions, how do "bi4" and the two "cang1's" (one with the grass radical on top and one with the water radical on the side) relate to "qing1." What are the differences among all the various sea colors, i.e., the "qing1 hai3," "bi4 hai3," and "cang1 hai3"? Does the same go for the sky: "qing1 tian1," "cang1 tian1," and "bi4 kong1" ("bi4 tian1"?)? Bi4 cang1cang1?

All this color language makes my head hurt, since I am not a visually oriented person. Yet, it would be nice to make some sense of all of this.

The following quote might also be of interest for this topic. It is from an entry (paper?) by Serena S. H. Jin in An Encyclopedia of Translation: Chinese-English--English-Chinese. The entry is entitled: "Colour Terms."

"Certain Chinese colour terms vary in meaning according to the context. Thus, bi [i cannot input the character] can mean 'green' as well as 'blue', cang [grass-radical character] can mean deep blue, dark green, grey or greyish-yellow. Qing [character omitted] is a colour word of many facets. Referring to sky, it means 'blue', while referring to vegetables it is 'green'; of hair it means 'black', of complexion it means 'ghastly pale'.

[Quest]

碧海 （碧蓝/碧绿的海）

碧空 （碧蓝的天空）

青天 （青蓝的天）

青海 （青蓝/青绿的海）

These words(碧 and 青) indicate certain standalone colors, but they could also be used to help modify other colors. 碧蓝, 青蓝, 碧绿, and 青绿 would be lighter and softer versions of the original 蓝 and 绿。

青海 碧海 青天 碧空 are really shorten versions of the long forms shown above. They indicate the degree of the sky/sea's color, which has been assumed and omitted.

苍天 （青蓝的天）

沧海 （青绿的海）

沧--青绿

苍--蓝 or 绿

Although still describing colors, these two color words add a degree of melancholy to their object.

I guess people in the past grouped blue and green into the same category. 0% 青 would probably be green and 100% 青 would be blue? and Blue and green were also color modifiers.

you get the idea.

[bathrobe]

青海 碧海 青天 碧空 are really shorten versions of the long forms shown above

Are you sure?

This would seem to indicate that 青 and 碧 are only 'secondary' colours, whereas 蓝 and 绿 are 'fundamental' colours.

If this is the case, 青 in Chinese and 青 in Japanese are quite different. 青 in Japanese is definitely one of the fundamental categories in the colour scheme.

[Quest]

They are both.

But they definitely had different meanings in classical Chinese.

青 and 碧 mean green/greenish today.

青天 苍天 and 沧海 usually carry a deeper meaning, and should not be interpreted literally right away.

[bathrobe]

青 and 碧 mean green/greenish today....But they definitely had different meanings in classical Chinese

Very interesting. Please elaborate. (I have one problem with looking up Chinese words and their meanings, and that is distinguishing between the contemporary and ancient meanings. Somehow they often seem to coexist in the modern language).

[skylee]

嫦娥 - 李商隱

雲母屏風燭影深

長河漸落曉星沉

嫦娥應悔偷靈藥

碧海青天夜夜心

[ala]

I'm going to repost, since some people are still confused:

青 in its purity should be blue, and in its impure color should be green.

青 in Chinese didn't just serve as an ambiguous though specific "natural" bluish green color of the mountains, it was actually the color blue with hues reaching to green for various stages of "impurity." Even today, for artists' pigment (where the purity of a color is emphasized), 青 refers to blue. Also, the Chinese color spectrum goes in the order: 红橙黃绿青蓝紫 (Roygbiv) where 青 is blue, and 蓝 is indigo. Yes colloquially, we refer to 青 as this greenish color, pale color, sometimes even black; but these are just seen as different hues of the ideal blue color of 青.

顔色 波長(nm)

紅色光 750～630 Red

橙色光 630～600 Orange

黃色光 600～570 Yellow

綠色光 570～490 Green

青色光 490～460 Blue

藍色光 460～430 Indigo

紫色光 430～380 Violet

[Ian_Lee]

青 can also be used as both a color and a modifier in some very common words, i.e. 青春

青春 can be used to mean youthful beauty or green spring (I guess nobody would argue that it means blue spring).

But 青春 also exists in Japanese vocabulary. Would Japanese users think that adolescence is blue or the spring color is blue? I wonder.

[Altair]

Quest, thanks for the interesting reply.

Ala, thanks for the interesting information on the color spectrum. It contains some surprises for me. Also, you seem to be referring to some specific concept in your references to "impurity." Can you elaborate? Why does "impure blue" imply "green," as opposed to "indigo" or "purple" or some other color?