Colors Vocab
“All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.” - Marc Chagall
Considering I can barely keep up with what’s written on the side of crayons, let’s stick with the most basic and most useful colors. Now, as I mentioned on the last page, colors can get pretty weird and complicated. There are い adjective colors, there are な adjective colors, and there are noun versions of all colors. For the vocab list, you are learning some of them as い adjectives, with the rest being learned as nouns. You’ll learn the rules behind when to use each color as an adjective or a “noun,” but for now, if you learn these words in this way you’ll come out ahead when the grammar part of the lesson starts. So, don’t worry about that too much – right now, your job is to learn the vocab. Then, we’ll use that knowledge to learn about the grammar.
| Color | かな | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 色 | いろ | Color |
| 青い | あおい | Blue |
| 赤い | あかい | Red |
| 黄色い | きいろい | Yellow |
| 黒い | くろい | Black |
| 白い | しろい | White |
| ピンク | ピンク | Pink |
| 紫 | むらさき | Purple |
| 緑 | みどり | Green |
| オレンジ色 | おれんじいろ | Orange |
| 茶色 | ちゃいろ | Brown |
| 灰色 | はいいろ | Gray |
| 金 | きん | Gold |
| 銀 | ぎん | Silver |
| 真っ黒 | まっくろ | Pure Black |
| 真っ赤 | まっか | Pure Red |
| 真っ白 | まっしろ | Pure White |
There aren’t too many words here – as usual, try to cram a few of these abstract words before starting a study spurt, that way when they show up in the list, they won’t be so abstract anymore!
Color Words on Anki
When you’ve gotten part way through the list, feel free to take a break to read the next page or two. Make sure you get back to your list and review / learn some new words soon, though, as you’ll need them in a little bit. Also, here’s a PDF with all the words on them for your reference (not to be used for cheating, though, right!?).
Color Words PDF