Soft language may be a shade blue (8)
I believe the answer is:
prussian
'blue' is the definition.
(Prussian blue is an example)
'soft language may be a shade' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'soft' could be 'p' (musical abbreviation for piano, 'soft') and 'p' is present in the answer.
'language' could be 'russian' (Russian is an example) and 'russian' is present in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for prussian that I've seen before include "Relating to a former German state" , "Native of a former German kingdom" , "Ova" .)