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 KZread 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!!!

@mcbain23

14 күн бұрын

21k now 🔥

@wonderrob3225

13 күн бұрын

I have been an artist for many years and I love discussing art history, theory, and more. I'm delighted to have discovered your channel and to have subscribed to it.

@nakenmil

12 күн бұрын

This is very well produced, feels very professional. You're off to a great start. Damn.

@clydeanthony894

10 күн бұрын

Love your passion for knowledge keep doing things you are passionate about it shines through your work

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.

@natalyrmrz

21 күн бұрын

yeah in Spanish we have Azul and Celeste😊

@techslfink9722

20 күн бұрын

There also is the mineral celestine that has a light blue hue

@techslfink9722

20 күн бұрын

Thank you for a great lecture on this!

@hieratics

17 күн бұрын

Light blue is cyan (🩵), totally another color different from blue (💙)

@noelleggett5368

16 күн бұрын

Similarly, for English speakers, red and pink are distinct colours, but in many cultures and languages, they are shades of the same colour. The same can be said of orange and yellow. In most European cultures, orange has only been used to describe a colour for a few centuries.

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

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

@jevonp

16 күн бұрын

Oh what the fuck this only has 10k views lol, her delivery is awesome! I love her voice

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

@thekingsdaughter4233

15 күн бұрын

Good job I don't know much Greek, or I'd fall into another rabbit hole over that. 😉 Now I must find a Greek professor and ask... 🤪😄

Literally the entire germanic language family does this

@hellbooks3024

19 күн бұрын

Not to mention French

@derechoplano

15 күн бұрын

@@hellbooks3024 And Catalan

@TheAlchaemist

15 күн бұрын

Add Italian too...

@woIf

15 күн бұрын

the point you

@ronald3836

15 күн бұрын

​@@hellbooks3024Allez Les Bleus!

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.

@manchagojohnsonmanchago6367

13 күн бұрын

Interesting, I always wondered this

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 🧿

@josephmedina6403

14 күн бұрын

Benitoite

@hosseinshahni

8 күн бұрын

That’s interesting, in Persian we use terms like "nīlī" and "nīlgūn" (nīl-like), and it is of course a variant of blue. I always understood nīlī as indigo but at least according to the Persian Wikipedia it’s "curelean" blue. There are a couple of proposed etymologies for the word nīl. The majority of linguists believe it comes from Middle Persian Nīl (indigo), but others consider it related to the name of the river Nile as it’s also pronounced as "nīl" in Persian, so according to them nīlī literally means "Nile-like". But I suspect it being a cognate of your "neel" or it being ultimately a borrowing makes more sense.

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".

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

@mienzillaz

19 күн бұрын

Since it derived from bright in different languages it stands for white, like "biały"

@luizfellipe3291

17 күн бұрын

Because catalan is a Gallo-Romance language that has been influenced by the germanic Franks while it was still Occitan in France.

@antonco2

16 күн бұрын

Som el poti-poti europeu

Ms. Violet Beauregard teaching us about the color blue.

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 😁

@thekingsdaughter4233

15 күн бұрын

Is the modrá, modr, modry (sorry, my phone doesn't do the other accents) a matter of grammar, perhaps? I think it was a Czech speaker who mentioned that the endings for the color words change when you say "blue-and-white stripes" (on a T-shirt) vs "white-and-blue stripes". 🤔🤷

@DusanPavlicek78

15 күн бұрын

@@thekingsdaughter4233 Yes! In Czech, words change forms depending on the grammatical context: modrý, modrá, modré, modrou, modrého, modrými, modrému (and many more) are all various forms of the same adjective. Modř is a noun but this particular form is quite bookish (or you could say poetic). The blue-and-white vs. white-and-blue is modrobílá vs. bělomodrá.

@YouBazinga

12 күн бұрын

In Slovenian language blue is also modra (barva). To be "moder" also means to be wise. In other exYu countries (Croatia, Serbia, Bosinia, etc.) it's plava and sometimes also modra (boja).

@YouBazinga

12 күн бұрын

@@DusanPavlicek78 Changes if you inflect the word, otherwise it has only one indefinite form.

@DusanPavlicek78

12 күн бұрын

@@YouBazinga Modrá barva - same as in Czech 🙂Wise is moudrý in Czech -- pretty close. Thanks for the info! 👍

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

@miochii

20 күн бұрын

same in brazil!! in portuguese we also say azul! pretty interesting

@ahurali5185

14 күн бұрын

I thinks it's Asul not Azul also I would like that Arabs use Azraq for blue interestingly

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.....

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.

@nl3659

13 күн бұрын

Totally makes sense - think of 2 other word pairs: red/pink, green/ lime to distinguish the darker and the lighter shade. The video is about a missing word in English, that should form a similar pair. As a result, people imagine a different shade of blue when speaking different languages...

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

@sophiasg

13 күн бұрын

thank you!!

This is incredible! You are amazing ❤

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.

@wooloolooo074

19 күн бұрын

that become 'blow' in english but she is right it entered through middle french not old English

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

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

@sophiasg

21 күн бұрын

I always edit without headphones on so thank you!!!! I had no idea 🙃

@t_timson

14 күн бұрын

@@sophiasg I think you might also still have the in-camera audio hanging out on the right channel too, it's just obviously much fainter and echoed

@yuliakatkova

8 күн бұрын

@@sophiasg yeah please fix for the future - was difficult to listen with headphones...

Nice touch with the blue nail polish…

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

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

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

@sophiasg

13 күн бұрын

that is so nice! thank you!

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 KZread 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

What kind of Tom Scott is this?

@Terigena

18 күн бұрын

A blue one. No red shirt here.

Your voice is awesome. Great video!

Great video; very interesting - well done 👍

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

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

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

Fascinating overview and etymology 😊❤

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

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".

@marthanichols8536

15 күн бұрын

In Irish they say "purple people."

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.

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.

@josephmedina6403

14 күн бұрын

Sodalite One of the main ingridients of this mineral is pure oxygen .

@vicstanfieldshire7754

13 күн бұрын

@@josephmedina6403 wow I had no idea thank you so much!

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

@sophiasg

13 күн бұрын

thank you so much. that means a lot coming from you!!!!!!

That was fascinating!

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

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*

@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.

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

@sophiasg

14 күн бұрын

thank you, I tried really hard to get it as right as I can. I always look up pronunciations before filming. I also did a year of Mandarin a million years ago where I got to practice tones.

@erdyantodwinugrohozheng

13 күн бұрын

Well, in Mandarin Chinese, 青 which Sophia mentioned before means both "blue" and "green" (more precisely "light green"). But, nowadays, many Chinese speakers say blue as "藍 (lán)". That's my explanation.....

@brentwalker8596

12 күн бұрын

@@erdyantodwinugrohozheng Yep. Lan is blue and lu is green. When I was in school, qing was always green-blue.

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.

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?

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

@damionkeeling3103

10 күн бұрын

Yeah, the last three I'd call aqua, blue, purple.

great video ❤️

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

@sophiasg

13 күн бұрын

thank you so much :D I'm working on episodes for the other colours now!

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.

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.)

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!

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: kzread.info/dash/bejne/e4qM08useJm8lbA.htmlsi=YkrKwp5nNyRRAT_T

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.

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.

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.

In Latvia we call it "zils" 🔵

Ya I like this and the fit is fire

Most interesting and enjoyable.

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

My left ear loved this video

@huss1836

13 күн бұрын

same

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

@sophiasg

13 күн бұрын

lol

nice treat for your left ear.

good pronunciation of Arabic and Persian words

@OctopusOwl

16 күн бұрын

Right?! I suspect they studied extensively.

@sophiasg

15 күн бұрын

@@OctopusOwlmy undergraduate degree is in Spanish and Arabic :)

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

@rickh3714

15 күн бұрын

Azurite is the mineral source of 'Azure'. Lapis Lazuli is the mineral rock that natural Ultramarine Blue is processed from. This process involves a complicated sifting levigation and lengthy beeswax extraction refinement for the purest/brightest grades. Ash blue is the rawer less refined form. Synthetic ultramarine is the ultramarine found in most artist colour ranges now. Thalo/ Pthalo blue is Pthalocyanine blue. With several grades as well as a green & nominally turquoise form. 'Monestial/Monastral blue- other names for Pthalocyanine blue.

@catherinejustcatherine1778

14 күн бұрын

@@rickh3714 thank you. I appreciate all the details.

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

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.

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)

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

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 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.

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

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

why is the sound so off?

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.

how do they call blue sapphire in India?

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 😆

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

Beautiful! Who knew?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Spanish we call it Azul, light blue would be Celeste/Azul Claro and dark blue would be Azul Oscuro/Marino. I guess the word Lapislazuli makes more sense now 😅🔵

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

Lapis is cool, but I like the story of woad. There was a profession in France called pisseur and they were just some fellas who drank beer and peed on the woad leaves to make indigo dye before true indigo took off.

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.

Blue is a sublime color.

I'd recently read of lapis lazuli in the Bible and I thought it'd be fun to trace its use here: Exodus 24:10 and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. Written around 1400 BCE, using lapis as a color associated with God. Song of Songs 5:14 His arms are rods of gold set with topaz. His body is like polished ivory decorated with lapis lazuli. This poetic description of her love's body, with the blue veins described. About 900 BCE Ezekiel 1:26 Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. Again, this use of lapis as a color associated with the throne of God. Written about 500 BCE. So here we have a documented used of the color blue associated with lapis lazuli, in Hebrew, back as far as 1400 BCE.

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

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.

Why not "blå", as it is in Denmark - oder blau?

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

"Why do we call blue 'blue' in English?" Good question. Too bad this video doesn't answer this question at all. No mentioning of the etymology of the word blue, it's use in Germanic languages and why there's no distinction between light and dark blue in this language family.