India, who have only three definite terms in their color vocabulary, viz., those for red, white and black, while others have also a term for yellow. The absence of a definite term for blue, on the other hand, is very common. The languages which have this characteristic appear to fall into two main classes; those which, as in Kiwai, have the same word for blue and black, and those which have the same word for blue and green. The former class includes the languages of Hovas and Bushmen, as well as of many Australian and Melanesian tribes. The second group comprises a very large number of languages, including one so near home as Welsh, in which there is only one word, 'glas,' for both green and blue.
By many races a word for blue has been borrowed from some other language, as was the case in Murray Island; thus many African races are said to use the term Dru,' obviously a corruption of the English word; in South America the Spanish word 'azul' has been borrowed, and the Battas of Sumatra have borrowed words both from Dutch and Malay. The word used by the Ga people of the Gold Coast for blue and for indigo is said to mean literally 'something that must be learnt,' these people having been taught the use of indigo either by Europeans or by other Africans.[1]
When in Ceylon I obtained color vocabularies from a number of Singhalese and Tamils, and, though the two languages differed in other respects, both Singhalese and Tamils used the word 'nil' or "nilam' for blue, and this word, which is said to be the same as the name of the river Nile, is found widely distributed among Asiatic languages. The river Nile has another interest in connection with this peculiarity of color language. We are in the habit of speaking of the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The Arabic name for blue is 'azrag,' a word used by the modern Egyptian for blue and for dark colors generally. 'El Bahr azrag' probably originally meant the dark Nile, and, when we speak of the Blue Nile, we are using an expression which is based upon the primitive confusion between blue and black.
Magnus has shown that these defects in color nomenclature cannot be referred to the poverty of language. Some races, such as the Kaffirs and Basutos of South Africa, who have no word for blue, have, nevertheless, a very long vocabulary for the various colors of oxen. Similarly, the Kirghises,[2] of Central Asia, have many different names
