You're talking about light mixing. The red/blue/yellow color wheel is based on pigment mixing: green + blue = cyan, red + blue = magenta
I also learned the RYB colors as primary colors, and find it much easier to reason about than CMY. That's probably also the reason why artists use it.
For the 'simple' language, I agree that RYB + white and black are enough.
What's inside your printer?
To get cyan you simply remove the magenta from blue!
cyan = blue + green
green = blue + yellow
cyan = blue + (blue + yellow)
Well, technically:
2 parts cyan = 1 part blue + 1 part green
2 parts green = 1 part blue + 1 part yellow
2 parts cyan = 1 part blue + 1 part (1 part blue + 1 part yellow)
i.e.
2 parts cyan = 1 part blue + 1/2 part blue + 1/2 part yellow
i.e.
4 parts cyan = 3 parts blue + 1 part yellow
But I think the real lesson here is that colour names based on additive colour mixing are silly.