Let's get started with some basic colours. Colours are everywhere, so they're easy to point out and practice with.
In Japanese, some colours are adjectives and some are nouns. Adjectives are words that describe nouns. There are two types of adjectives in Japanese unlike the English ones you know of. However, you don't need to worry about it too much for now, we'll just cover the very basics of them.
Adjective Colours
| English | Romaji | Kana | Kanji | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | White | shiroi | しろい | 白い |
| A | Black | kuroi | くろい | 黒い |
| A | Blue | aoi | あおい | 青い |
| A | Red | akai | あかい | 赤い |
Here are some examples for you showing these adjectives in use.
Noun Colours
Here are some more colours for you but these ones are nouns
| English | Romaji | Kana | Kanji | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| N | Green | midori | みどり | 緑 |
| N | Brown | chairo | ちゃいろ | 茶色 |
| N | Yellow | kiiro | きいろ | 黄色 |
| N | Orange | orenji iro | オレンジいろ | オレンジ色 |
| N | Grey | haiiro | はいいろ | 灰色 |
| N | Pink | pinku | ピンク | ピンク |
In order to connect these nouns to another noun we need to put a の (no) between the words. Remember to put the colour before the noun. It would go in this order: "colour の noun". See the examples below:
の is a special type of particle in Japanese that has many uses. Here, it is used as a noun modifier. We will learn more about the の particle in another lesson. In the examples above, the noun before の adds details about the last noun (haiiro no kuruma = A car that is Grey).
Additional Notes
Can you now tell me what your favourite colour is? Did we cover it? My favourite colour is pink. It's so cute!
Just remember to keep practising in real life! It's okay to say the noun in English if you don't know what it is in Japanese yet and remember which colours are adjectives and which are nouns, they are important!
If you don't know if a colour is an adjective or a noun, try checking a dictionary.
Remember, Japanese Pronunciation is very different to English. Try to check other sites such as YouTube to hear these words being spoken by real life Japanese people. You may also use an online dictionary such as japandict.com that has audio and an image for pitch accent.