Pink man sings the blues

I've not had much time to blog recently, so a short post is overdue. I'm in a rather sad and melancholy mood at the moment, but I suppose a bit of harmless blather won't do any harm.

My son has recently learned most of the words for common colours, It took a little time for him to distinguish between pink and red and it occurred to me that pink's quite an odd colour. Add bit of white to blue or green paint and you get light blue or green. What's so special about red that we need a separate word for light red? The English language is quirky and unpredictable but on this point at least, it's not alone. I'm no linguist, but Spanish, French and German also have words equivalent to pink, rather than naming the colour a lighter shade of red. So, in my small and unscientific sample of reasonably major languages, the same distinction is made.

I wonder, vaguely, if this means anything more significant than that, if you go back far enough, the languages have common roots, and/or may have borrowed words and concepts?

Interestingly, The Book of General Ignorance (a spin-off from the TV series QI), informs me that in Russian there are two entirely separate words for blue; "goluboi" and "sinii", approximately meaning "light blue" and "dark blue". Goluboi and sinii are seen as as distinct colours in Russian just as pink and red are are in English. I did check and, yes, Russian also classifies red and pink as separate colours rather than just different shades, just like English, French, Spanish and German.

I would be quite interested to know if there are languages which do just regard red and pink as shades of the same colour, but at the moment I'm feeling too tired and gloomy to use any energy finding out. Likewise it would be interesting to know why the colour blue is associated with a sad state of mind when we use the American expression "feeling blue", but again, I haven't got the energy at the moment. Not to mention the fact that, although interesting, it's probably not that important. Things that are important include being kind and giving your friends and loved ones the time, care and attention they deserve. If we forget to do that, we end up feeling blue and probably deserve to do so. Anyway, whilst the blues are around, it's sort of consoling to know that, put to music, melancholy can sometimes make a majestic sound.