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Green Tea Page 02

The Chinese character (pronounced green in Mandarin and ao in Japanese) has a meaning that covers both blue and green; blue and green are traditionally considered shades of In more contemporary terms, they are respectively. 

Japanese also has two terms that refer specifically to the color green, which is derived from the classical Japanese descriptive verb to be in leaf, to flourish' in reference to trees) and in, which is derived from the English word 'green'). However, in Japan, although the traffic lights have the same colors that other countries' have, the green light is described using the same word as for blue,  because green is considered a shade of aoi; similarly, green variants of certain fruits and vegetables such as green apples, green shish (as opposed to red apples and red shiso) will be described with the word.

 "Green" in modern European languages corresponds to about 520–570 nm, but many historical and non-European languages make other choices, e.g. using a term for the range of ca. 450–530 nm ("blue/green") and another for ca. 530–590 nm ("green/yellow")

In the comparative study of color terms in the world's languages, green is only found as a separate category in languages with the fully developed range of six colors (white, red yellow, green, blue, black), or more rarely in systems with five colors (white, red yellow, green, black/blue).

See distinction of green from blue  These languages have introduced supplementary vocabulary to denote "green", but these terms are recognizable as recent adoptions that are not in origin color terms (much like the English adjective orange being in origin not a color term but the name of a fruit). Thus, the Thai word besides meaning "green" also means "rank" and "smelly" and holds other unpleasant associations.