How Russian Speakers Say “Blue”

Upon standing and examining a painting such as “The Starry Night”, two people standing side by side, depending on the language they speak, may be struck with a particular dilemma. Assuming one of these viewers speaks English, and the other speaks English and Russian, an analysis of the painting would reveal a rather fascinating difference between the two languages. Van Gogh utilizes an amalgamation of various shades of blue to create the majority of the painting, and if the Russian speaker were asked to describe the blue color in their native language, they would immediately respond by asking “The light blue, or the dark blue?” While English has modifiers to determine which shade is being referred to, in Russian there are two completely different terms to identify certain shades of blue. Lighter shades are usually referred to with the word “голубой” (goluboy), and darker shades with the word “синий” (siniy).

The origin of the first term comes from the word “голубь” (golub’), meaning ‘pigeon’, as a word used to describe the shades of blue reflection of the plumage on the neck of pigeons, although the current corresponding color now somewhat differs from the plumage of most pigeons due to the evolution of the language as a result of Latin influence narrowing the meanings of the word down to the color of the sky. The other word for blue comes from a proto-Slavic root-word that is closely connected to words for greyish-blue, and this is most likely where the association with a darker blue came from.

This results in a rather confusing situation, as for most Russian speakers, the difference is completely intuitive: there is no single shade of blue that can be both. They are as different as blue and green are to the average English speaker. Blue is always one or the other, but that ends up creating frustrating situations when it comes to translation, as well as perception, amplified by the fact that the word “голубой” (goluboy) does not have a direct translation in the English language, as “синий” (siniy) is typically the blue that most English speakers refer to.