I would guess most languages with a few million speakers have words for a lot of colors. But I think the argument here is that "baby blue" or "sky blue" is not one of English's "base" colors, but is rather within the classification "blue". The difference is subtle, but it's captured in the test mentioned in the article: if I switch from navy to baby blue, and English speaker might clock both as blue. But for a Russian speaker, these would clock as different colors entirely. I believe a similar thing would happen for blue and green between an English speaker and a Japanese speaker.
The perceptual difference is microscopic, and I certainly wouldn't take it as far as the statement in the headline, but it does seem like the difference is there.
Re:Our Language Affects What We See
by josefresco on Tuesday February 05, 2019 @10:41AM
(#19086256)
The example from the article was better than the comment I was responding to, which used the sample "salad green".
* Russian has two words, goluboy for light blue and siniy for dark blue.
And English has "mint green" and "lime green", "sea foam green" "neon green" all representing different variants of green. For blue we have aqua, royal blue, periwinkle, powder blue, baby blue etc.