Shades of blue?

[david-us.livejournal.com]

Do "синий" and "голубой" have different meanings as far as the color they represent? Is one darker than the other? Or, are they completely synonymous?

Is it equally appropriate to say "голубое небо" or "синее небо", for instance?

David Emerling
Memphis, TN

Comments

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

Yes and yes. голубой is light blue or cyan.

[dvanoltri.livejournal.com]

голубой is light blue and синий is blue. You can say both голубое and синее небо, but you can say синее for dark blue, blue or light blue and голубое only for light blue sky.

[kart.livejournal.com]

It's like the difference between red and pink.

[weit.livejournal.com]

[sunrin.livejournal.com]

This looks fantastic ))

[http://users.livejournal.com/_christine/]

Would there be a such color to Russian eyes as синевато-голубой?

[oryx_and_crake]

No, but you can say светло-синий.

[konstkaras.livejournal.com]

Голубой and синий are 5th and 6th color of (stereotypical view of) rainbow, what Newton called "blue" and "indigo" respectively.
So голубой may actually be not darker, but have another hue.

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

Wait, really? So, would you consider something like this to be голубой, while this is синий?

[brat-pushkin.livejournal.com]

That's right.

[pinky-the-cow.livejournal.com]

The first one isn't голубой. English would call that teal. This tint of зеленовато-синий or синевато-зелёный may be described as цвет морской волны (literally, color of the sea wave).

[besisland.livejournal.com]

Aqua it is called.

[pigmeich.livejournal.com]

I think the real hue was lost in translation.

[oryx_and_crake]

голубой also has a colloquial meaning of gay, while синий does not have such connotations.

[dvanoltri.livejournal.com]

синий also has a colloquial meaning of drunk=)

[oryx_and_crake]

Cannot say it is a widely used one.

[vakhitov.livejournal.com]

I do hear it used in that meaning from time to time. St. Petersburg inhabitant here.

[dvanoltri.livejournal.com]

алкоголь is often called синька, and пьяный - синий, I'm also from Moscow and I cannot say it is widely used, but it is used for sure. Probably it is some kind of adoption from german - in german Blau means also drunk.

[vakhitov.livejournal.com]

http://community.livejournal.com/learn_russian/887265.html?thread=13674465#t13674465

[http://users.livejournal.com/_christine/]

Would голубая refer to a lesbian, then?

[oryx_and_crake]

No, it won't. Голубой only refers to gay males.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

розовая

[http://users.livejournal.com/_christine/]

That is good to know. Thanks and thanks^!

[the-sunn.livejournal.com]

It is used rarely than голубой

[firebottle.livejournal.com]

Light blue != cyan.

[dvanoltri.livejournal.com]

To my eyes first one is black(may be dark blue, темно-синий, иссиня чёрный, second is синий and third is голубой. And the third colour is the nearest colour to the colour of sky.

[oryx_and_crake]

The third is not голубой, it has too much green in it. I'd rather call this colour бирюзовый (turquoise). The second, on the other hand, is too dark. But this strongly depends on your monitor settings as well.

[pinky-the-cow.livejournal.com]

Nice idea, I agree with бирюзовый (but I would make it тускло-бирюзовый).

[pinky-the-cow.livejournal.com]

First one is тёмно-синий, second is ярко-синий, third is цвет морской волны.

Cyan is RGB =

[zeqfreed.livejournal.com]

Yandex has got a nice feature quite recently -- color search.
Check out this (http://yandex.ru/yandsearch?text=голубой) and this (http://yandex.ru/yandsearch?text=синий).

[david-us.livejournal.com]

That is pretty neat!

That answers all questions about what color is represented by a particular name.

Thank you!

David Emerling
Memphis, TN

[zeqfreed.livejournal.com]

You're welcome.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

All we need to do is calibrate our monitors. :)

[vakhitov.livejournal.com]

+1 Insightful

[towarysc.livejournal.com]

For example, English wikipedia describes the team colors of FC Zenit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_Zenit_St._Petersburg) (сине-бело-голубые) as 'blue-white-sky blues'