Lesson 17: "Colors"
Often, colors are one of the first things people learn when studying a new language, but there's a reason we've waited a while before starting them here. In our last lesson, we learned a little about adjectives. Now, a color can be a noun, if you're talking about the color, like "Blue is my favorite.", but normally, you use colors as adjectives, to describe something, like: "The sky is blue." For most Japanese colors, you add an "i" to the end to make it an adjective, and that's the way you're going to normally hear them (remember the "-i" adjectives we talked about in Lesson #16?). It's also the way most people learn the Japanese colors, but we're going to learn both Noun and Adjective colors. The Japanese word for color is "Iro" (ee-roh). Nani iro des' ka? (What color is it?) You'll notice a lot of color names end with "-iro"
Noun/Adjective
Shiro/Shiroi (she-roh-ee) = White
Kiiro/Kiiroi (kee-roh-ee) = Yellow
Chairo/Chairoi (chai-roh-ee) = Brown
Kiniro/Kiniro (keen-ee-roh) = Gold (Color, not the metal)
Giniro/Giniro (guen-ee-roh) = Silver (Color, not the metal)
Pretty easy, they all end with "-iro", and you make them into adjectives by adding "-i".
These don't end with "-iro", but you can still change them to adjectives by adding "-i".
Kuro/Kuroi (ku-roh-ee) = Black
Ao/Aoi (ah-oh-ee) = Blue
Aka/Akai (ah-ka-ee) = Red
That covers most of the colors. These two end with "-i" already in their noun form. They are sort of exceptions. The Japanese often don't really distinguish between Blue and Green, they sort of think of Green just as another shade of Blue (Green is just Blue with some Yellow mixed in after all). I guess Purple might not be an important color either. All these colors below, you can make into adjective by adding "no", the particle we learned before. I'll give some examples later, right now, just learn the colors.
Midori (mee-doh-ree) = Green
Murasaki (moo-rah-saa-kee) = Purple
Grey isn't really an official color at all. The Japanese just use "Hai iro" which just means "Ash color", or "The color of ashes".
Here are a couple color words borrowed from English:
Pinku (pin-ku) = Pink
Orenji (oh-ren-gee) = Orange
Now, all those colors that don't have that "-i" ending to change them into adjectives can still be used to describe something. Remember the particle "no" that shows one noun belongs to or is associated with another? You can use that here, like "Midori no kusa" (Green Grass), "Pinku no neko" (Pink Cat), and "Murasaki no kimono" (Purple kimono). Easy! Those other colors, the ones that you add the "-i" to make into adjective, are easy too. Once you add the "-i", they are adjectives, and all you need to do is add the next word that they describe, like "Kuroi tori" (Black bird).
If the color is being used as a noun, you don't need to add anything. Just use it like any other noun "Ao wa suki na des'" (Blue is my favorite).
You can say a color is light or dark with "Usui no" (eww-su-ee noh) for light, and "Iroguro no" (ee-roh-gu-roh no) for dark.
Usui no ao (light blue)
Iroguro no aka (dark red)
Don't be intimidated by all that. This really isn't too hard. Study a couple colors at a time and quiz yourself, don't try to memorize them all at once, you'll forget some. Then practice by thinking of the Japanese color for different things you see, maybe try making some sentences, like "Kore wa akai hana des'." (This is a red flower).