Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 October 5

= October 5 =

Blue
When people say "blue" in everyday talk, do they more likely mean blue or cyan?? (Look at this URL: http://www.mariowiki.com/Tileoid_B .) Georgia guy (talk) 14:16, 5 October 2023 (UTC)


 * The meanings of the colour terms are not precisely defined. The meaning of "blue" is roughly the range of colours that most native English speakers not having a colour vision deficiency, when asked which colour something is, will name as being blue. So when they say "blue", they likely mean blue. Apart from that, I think people are far more likely to use "turquoise-coloured" than "cyan-coloured" for a hue between green and blue. --Lambiam 14:54, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Lambiam, I'm sure jade is a greener color than cyan. Georgia guy (talk) 14:58, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, cyan does not strike me as being anything but a shade of blue despite being literally half green by definition. From my small informal survey of a few friends, cyan registers as mostly being a shade of blue to them all as well. As Lambiam mentioned, "blue" depends on what the speaker perceives as being blue, and I imagine that in everyday life, cyan could be readily denoted as blue, though it's entirely possible that this is a cultural thing. GalacticShoe (talk) 15:14, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * It's gonna depend on how many colours the person thinks there are. If they feel there are about a dozen colours (blue, purple, green, orange, red, yellow, black, white, pink, brown, and grey), they'll probably say that cyan and blue are both blue. If they're interested in computer graphics, cyan will be identified as a different colour. If they are interested in colours for some reason, blue will be blue and cyan will be turquoise. Matt Deres (talk) 19:37, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * For updated versions of Berlin & Kay's Basic Color Terms, see and  Folly Mox (talk) 20:15, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * It's a commonplace, one of the first things children learn about colors, that "blue and yellow make green". Typically this is demonstrated with subtractive colors.  Blue, in its strict color-theory sense, is not a subtractive primary color, but cyan is, and the watercolors or markers that children play with are likely to have a "blue" that's actually closer to what we nerdier sorts are likely to insist is cyan, but calling it cyan is more of a theoretical preoccupation than an accurate reflection of the English language.
 * In terms of RGB theory, of course, blue and yellow don't make green. Depending on the proportions, they might even make white. --Trovatore (talk) 20:15, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Colour perception is definitely partially cultural. In Chinese, the same word "黃" is used to name most shades of what we would call yellow or brown; meanwhile we use the same word "red" to name both 赤 and 紅. Folly Mox (talk) 20:19, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * There's also teal, which however is a very English term, that would be less internationally understood than turquoise or cyan. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:04, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * In recent Australian elections we have seen the appearance of a loose grouping of Teal independents, people who historically would have been part of the Liberal Party of Australia, our major conservative party (true!) which uses blue as its colour, but who have been influenced by Green politics. HiLo48 (talk) 23:13, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * In recent Australian elections we have seen the appearance of a loose grouping of Teal independents, people who historically would have been part of the Liberal Party of Australia, our major conservative party (true!) which uses blue as its colour, but who have been influenced by Green politics. HiLo48 (talk) 23:13, 5 October 2023 (UTC)


 * This is quite a deep topic. It is as noted already somewhat cultural, something that's easily overlooked if you've only experience of European languages which share common roots. But go to e.g. Asia and there are a number of variations. The theory is covered at colour term which describes how cultures acquire language terms for colours in a particular order, but with variations especially as the number of colours increase.--2A04:4A43:90AF:FAB6:2573:6A03:7AB4:A6FF (talk) 00:03, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I interpret the question as being about the meaning of the term "blue" as used by English speakers . When someone says, "I have a blue whaddayacallit", are they more likely to be referring to a colour in this palette:
 * Color icon blue.png
 * or one in this palette:
 * Color icon cyan.png
 * ? --Lambiam 04:35, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I imagine this question might have a lot to do with the comparative prevalence of bluer blues and more cyan-like blues among the type of object being described. Again, based purely on personal experience, I would imagine that many English speakers would consider both palettes "blue", and also wouldn't distinguish what type of blue unless requested to do so. So if anyone I personally know were to describe something as being blue, I would definitely have make assumptions on the specific kind of blue based more on the object itself. A blue fruit would conjure up the former palette, a blue egg would conjure up the latter palette, and anything described purely in terms of being blue without additional context would be a complete toss-up. GalacticShoe (talk) 05:17, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
 * The closest individual square to what I would call "neutral blue" is the middle square of the leftmost column of the "cyan" palette. --Trovatore (talk) 19:38, 6 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's pretty much my perception as well. With the central square of the "blue" palette coming second. There's only 4 squares in the cyan palette that I would consider blue as opposed to green, and only about 8 in the blue palette. I would call the rest of the blue palette "purple". Except for the bottom square on the lower right, which seems more green. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:22, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * While I don't know where to draw the line in an RGB colour space between "more like blue" and "more like cyan", it appears to me that most of the images shown for the Google image search "blue dress" are blue rather than cyan. Likewise for "blue sports car" and "blue flower". Blue eggs are more over the place. They include a hit on the Wikipedia article Robin egg blue, which calls this colour in the cyan palette "a shade of teal". --Lambiam 13:50, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I copied this from the cyan article:
 * Using ordinary English rather than discussing color theory, I would definitely call that "blue", and when I say "blue", that's pretty close to the center of the range of colors I have in mind. It would not ordinarily occur to me to use the word "green" in connection with it.  Many of your image searches for "blue" also seem to return a color in that range. --Trovatore (talk) 23:52, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Using ordinary English rather than discussing color theory, I would definitely call that "blue", and when I say "blue", that's pretty close to the center of the range of colors I have in mind. It would not ordinarily occur to me to use the word "green" in connection with it.  Many of your image searches for "blue" also seem to return a color in that range. --Trovatore (talk) 23:52, 9 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Just to settle the question definitively [yes, that's a joke]: on its October 5 episode this year, Jeopardy! asked players for a certain word they defined as referring to a "shade of blue", and, yes, the word they wanted was "cyan". --142.112.221.114 (talk) 06:17, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * To my eyes, the points labelled blue, azure, and cyan this diagram are all shades of "blue". For some objects, I would expect a "blue ____" to match the "blue" triangle. For others, I might expect a "blue ____" to match the "cyan" one. And for still others, the "azure" one. For other objects I would have no expectations of which they would line up with and would be looking for an item that matched any of those three. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 13:29, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Matrilineal grandparents
Since every person has eight great-grandparents (with apparently 4 matrilineal), how that person's (say, mine) matrilineal great-grandfather H. who was the father of my mom's father Y. could be distinguished from my another matrilineal great-grandfather D. who was the father of my mom's mother? Visualisation for easiness. Possibly, in terms of genealogy or common names, thanks. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 20:20, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * We have an article on kinship terminology. Otherwise, I am not sure if I understand your query.Swedish would allow eight different terms for the eight different great-grandparents, otherwise, with a system where "morfarsfar" means "mom's dad's dad", roughly. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:59, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Or "mother's father's father", which is a perfectly good way to describe it in English. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:52, 5 October 2023 (UTC)


 * 212.180.235.46 -- You have four great-grandparents who are "maternal" or "on the mother's side", but you have at most two great-grandparents who are matrilineal (only one for purposes of mitochondrial DNA inheritance). The terms used in English, if there's a need to make a distinction, are "mother's mother's father" etc, as indicated by Baseball_Bugs. AnonMoos (talk) 22:52, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Syriac name
What's the name of the Mor Ephrem Syriac Orthodox Church in Syriac on this photo? (I tried my best but I don't know how to read the Serta/Serto form of the Syriac alphabet...) a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 22:31, 5 October 2023 (UTC)


 * ܥܕܬܐ ܕܡܪܝ ܐܦܪܝܡ ܕܣܘܪܝܝܐ ܩܕܡܝܐ ܐܪܬܕܘܟܣܝܐ. ܐܣܛܢܒܘܠ; if you prefer Square Aramaic script, that'd be עדתא דמרי אפרים דסורייא קדמיא ארתדוכסיא. אסטנבול 2A02:C7C:74EB:3000:E0DF:B8C3:FE58:63FF (talk) 22:58, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! a455bcd9 (Antoine) (talk) 07:04, 9 October 2023 (UTC)