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The sky is blue. The flag is red, white and blue.

To a Russian speaker, calling these colors by the same name seems absurd.



well, arguably, navy versus cornflower would handily cover pedantic differentiation, as needed.

put another way, one can easily counter that the flag and the sky handily share similar saturation of the same hue, differentiated only by the value of darkness.

take it one step further, and the sky at dusk will drop its brightness, and even if only for a moment, match the flag’s deeper blue, until the sun completely sets and the night sky becomes black, when not contaminated by light pollution.


My point was that, the way the language is actually used by its speakers, "blue" is more general than either of its two Russian translations.


The color of the sky varies dramatically depending on weather conditions, time of day, and which part of the sky you look at.

Even if you limit the discussion to cloudless skies between an hour after dawn to an hour before dusk, there is extreme variation.




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