Why So Many Things Are Described As Blue in Japanese *Updated*
Is it blue or green?
While learning Japanese I have run into words that I would recognize as being green in English but in Japanese, they are described as being blue, or ao(青). For example, green apples(aoringo | 青林檎), green vegetables(aoyasai | 青野菜) and green traffic light(aoshingo | 青慎吾) all use the word for blue instead of green. This phenomenon bothered me for some time, so I decided to find the answer to why.
Like most topics in language, this mystery can be explained by learning som history.
In the old days, there were only four primary colors in the Japanese language;
These four colors were used to describe all shades of color. Anything pink, orange, green, yellow, etc. would have been described as a shade of either blue, red, black, or white.
The color blue used to include what is now called purple, gray, and green. One example of this that still lives on to this day is the grey heron, which is called a blue heron(青鷺) in Japanese.
