color terms : Berlin & Kay

[Steve Kl.]

It's been over 10 years since I've read Berlin and Kay, so this is just
vague recollection, but I don't think their point was that English
speakers can't differentiate between light blue and dark blue, we
obviously can, but that we conceptualize light blue and dark blue as blue
and others conceptualize them as completely different colors.

Compare this with the earlier orange/red discussion we had. We
conceptualize orange/red differently than languages which have no word for
orange.

Berlin & Kay 1969
Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution

is the basic book that lays all of this out and I highly recommend it if
you're going to do any work in this realm, because it's the one text that
anyone reviewing your work will have expected you to read.