>Today in Western languages the same thing happens with blue and cyan. Italians will think of cyan (azure) as a colour while the French see it as a shade of blu

>Today in Western languages the same thing happens with blue and cyan. Italians will think of cyan (azure) as a colour while the French see it as a shade of blue, for example. The same thing happens in Japanese. When I describe something that's light blue as "ao," I will invariably get a confused look and a "You mean mizuiro ('water color'), right?" But to me, a native English speaker, it's still blue.