Синій колір у мовно-культурних традиціях слов’ян: українсько-чесько-словенські візії
Blue Color in the Language and Cultural Traditions of Slavs: Ukrainian–Czech–Slovenian Visions

Summary/Abstract: The relationship between sensory perception and verbally expressed knowledge is one of the topical problems of modern linguistics. The theory of the basic color terms of the American scientists B. Berlin and P. Kay, which has been widely discussed in scientific circles, is considered classic. Notably, basic colors in some languages, according to scientific terminology, have variant nominations: for example, blue, sky-blue, and azure in Ukrainian. The purpose of our study is to conduct a comparative analysis of the semantics of the color blue in the ethnocultural systems of three regional subgroups of Slavic languages: Eastern (Ukrainian), Western (Czech), and Southern (Slovenian), in which this color name has a different set of lexical counterparts. In such a comparative perspective, as far as we know, this material is considered for the first time. The focus of our attention was the question of what semantics – primary and secondary – are presented by the color blue. The analysis of the lexical material showed that the color blue and its shades in the Ukrainian, Czech, and Slovenian languages are represented by a significant number of nouns that reveal associative connections with the real world of things and phenomena without a clear predominance of one or more referent objects. At the same time, the semantic structure of the color blue turned out to be quite complex and changeable due to etymological collisions. A psychological factor also plays its role here: the individual perception of an object or subject in each specific discourse causes the mobility of the semantics of the blue color, its rich synonymy, and valence. From this point of view, the Ukrainian adjective blue should be considered, which in the modern language has developed semantics unusual for the Czech and Slovenian languages – homosexual. The meaning of the blue color is not lost in phraseological units that show stable connections with the names of motivated denotations. This refers to historical and modern realities in the field of economy and social relations, which form a group of intercultural phraseological equivalents. At the same time, the blue component in the phraseology of the studied languages testified to the idiomatic meaning of figurative compounds: Czech modré pondělí, Slovenian plavi ponedeljek. We stand by the hypothesis that the motive for not working on Monday is a pan-European one that originated in the Middle Ages and was first associated with carnival traditions, then with the guild fraternity of artisans, primarily shoemakers. The German language served as a guide for “Blue Monday” on the Czech and Slovenian foundations.

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