Lesson 39 - Colors

Colors are not that hard to memorize. The only tricky part about them is that some of them are adjectives while some aren't, and some of them are even Japanese-english, to be written in Katakana. The actual word for color is iro.

We will start with the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue. Akai is red, and is an adjective. Kiiroi is yellow and aoi is blue. The next three colors, the secondary colors of orange, green, and purple, aren't adjectives. ORENJI, a Japanese-english word, is the word for orange. Midori (or sometimes you might see it midoriiro) is the word for green and the last is murasaki or purple. For these, you cannot put it directly in front of a noun. You have to modify it with no.

For example, if you wanted to say "purple flower", you'd have to say murasaki no hana. The word for brown is chairo and grey is the Japlish word of GUREI. Pink is PINKU. All these are no adjective. White and black, though, are. Kuroi is black and shiroi is white. In the next lesson, you will use some colors to describe things about people.

Vocabulary Review
色 Iro- color
赤い Akai- red
黄色い Kiiroi- yellow
青い Aoi- blue
オレンジ ORENJI- orange
緑 Midori- green
紫 Murasaki- purple
茶色 Chairo- brown
グレイ GUREI- gray
インク PINKU- pink
黒い Kuroi- black
白い Shiroi- white