When a name for a colour is absent from a language, it is usually blue. When name for a colour is indefinite, it is usually green. Ancient Hebrew, Welsh, Vietnamese and until recently, Japanese, lack a word for blue….the Icelandic word for blue and black is the same, one word that fits sea, lava and raven.
It is shown that the words for colours enter evolving languages in this order, nearly universally: black, white and red, then yellow and green ( in either order), with green covering blue until blue comes in to itself. Once blue is acquired, it eclipses green. Once named, blue pushes green into a less definite version. Green confusion is manifest in turquoise, the is-it-blue-or-is-it-green colour. Despite the complexities of colour names even in the same language, we somehow make sense of another person’s references. We know colour as a perceptual ‘truth’ that we imply and share without its direct experience, like feeling pain in a phantom limb or in another person’s body. Within every colour lies a story, and stories are the binding agent of culture.
ellen meloy, the anthropology of turquoise