Dunno about Russian, but Hebrew has them for sure—“T’khelet” means “Light blue”, “Kakhol” means “blue”. I know quite a few bilingual ~5yo kids, who, if they’re wearing a light blue T-shirt, will scream at you if you say “you have a Kakhol T-shirt” in Hebrew, but will happily agree they are wearing a “blue” T-shirt—thus showing that sufficient lack of reflectivity can have two conflicting vision systems in the same individual. (BTW—“light blue” is just an approximation, it’s a specific shade of light blue).
Italian has azzurro for ‘light blue’, but nowadays it’s not that unusual to use blu for that colour when the difference doesn’t matter. (I was thinking that this might be a relatively recent influence of English blue, then I remembered about a famous mid-20th-century song which refers to the sky as blu.)
In Spanish there also a word for light blue, “celeste” (etymologically related to “sky”), and how appropriate it is to say just “azul” (blue) instead of “celeste” depends on context. For example, an Argentine would never call their flag “azul y blanca” (blue and white) since they are taught from childhood that it is “celeste y blanca”. But they wouldn’t mind saying the sky on a clear day is either “azul” or “celeste”. A same piece of light blue cloth might be called “celeste” in some occasions, and “azul” in others—for example if one just wants to contrast it with a red one.
Yeah, in flags, football jerseys, etc. Italian is more precise too, using blu only for royal blue or darker, celeste for sky blue or lighter, and azzurro for intermediate shades of blue.
(I think I saw a list of English—Italian ‘false friends’ which listed blu/blue as false friends, saying that It. blu corresponds to Engl. navy blue and Engl. blue corresponds to It. azzurro! In some specific contexts that might well be/have been the case, but I don’t think there are that many people left who would normally use azzurro for (say) Uno cards, let alone people who would consider it exceedingly weird if you called such a card blu.)
Dunno about Russian, but Hebrew has them for sure—“T’khelet” means “Light blue”, “Kakhol” means “blue”. I know quite a few bilingual ~5yo kids, who, if they’re wearing a light blue T-shirt, will scream at you if you say “you have a Kakhol T-shirt” in Hebrew, but will happily agree they are wearing a “blue” T-shirt—thus showing that sufficient lack of reflectivity can have two conflicting vision systems in the same individual. (BTW—“light blue” is just an approximation, it’s a specific shade of light blue).
Italian has azzurro for ‘light blue’, but nowadays it’s not that unusual to use blu for that colour when the difference doesn’t matter. (I was thinking that this might be a relatively recent influence of English blue, then I remembered about a famous mid-20th-century song which refers to the sky as blu.)
I don’t think that necessarily follows.
In Spanish there also a word for light blue, “celeste” (etymologically related to “sky”), and how appropriate it is to say just “azul” (blue) instead of “celeste” depends on context. For example, an Argentine would never call their flag “azul y blanca” (blue and white) since they are taught from childhood that it is “celeste y blanca”. But they wouldn’t mind saying the sky on a clear day is either “azul” or “celeste”. A same piece of light blue cloth might be called “celeste” in some occasions, and “azul” in others—for example if one just wants to contrast it with a red one.
Yeah, in flags, football jerseys, etc. Italian is more precise too, using blu only for royal blue or darker, celeste for sky blue or lighter, and azzurro for intermediate shades of blue.
(I think I saw a list of English—Italian ‘false friends’ which listed blu/blue as false friends, saying that It. blu corresponds to Engl. navy blue and Engl. blue corresponds to It. azzurro! In some specific contexts that might well be/have been the case, but I don’t think there are that many people left who would normally use azzurro for (say) Uno cards, let alone people who would consider it exceedingly weird if you called such a card blu.)