青

Pattern visualization

Examples

1. 空の青がきれいです。▶ —
   The blue of the sky is beautiful.
2. 信号が青になりました。▶ —
   The light turned blue (green).

Collocations

Mnemonic

青 ao — noun for "blue" AND "green" in Japanese's broader categorization. Traffic lights are called 青 even when they're green: classical Japanese lumped blue and green into one category, and the lexicon retained it. Same pattern: 青菜 (aona, leafy greens), 青々 (aoao, lush green). Onyomi せい (sei): 青年 (seinen, young person), 青春 (seishun, youth/spring of life) — "young, unripe" metaphor. A textbook case of how vocabulary encodes culture-specific color cognition.

Quick check

1. Why is the green traffic light called 青信号?

   • Classical Japanese categorized blue and green together
   • Government mislabeling
   • Direct Western loanword
   • Actually blue, not green