Other Colors
“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.” - Pedro Calderon de la Barca
When I say “other colors” I don’t mean all the other colors you could learn. That would be too many. As I’m sure you know, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of colors out there, and only 15-20 are really useful to know (at least at this stage).
With colors in Japanese, though, there are often different versions of each colors, namely versions that are in katakana. You should use the words you learned (because they’re Japanese), but it’s common enough that you’ll run into the “other versions” that you should know what they are and know that they exist. Luckily, they sound kind of like the English versions of their words.
| Version 1 | Version 2 | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| あおい | ブルー | Blue |
| あかい | レッド | Red |
| きいろい | イエロー | Yellow |
| くろい | ブラック | Black |
| しろい | ホワイト | White |
| ピンク | ピンク | Pink |
| むらさき | パープル | Purple |
| みどり | グリーン | Green |
| オレンジいろ | オレンジ | Orange |
| ちゃいろ | ブラウン | Brown |
| はいいろ | グレー | Gray |
| きん | ゴールド | Gold |
| ぎん | シルバー | Silver |
As you can see, the “alternative” versions are easy…possibly easier than the Japanese versions of the colors, just because they’re more familiar. Also, some of them cross over (like pink and orange). You don’t have to learn / memorize all these, but you do have to be able to recognize them if you read / heard them (which shouldn’t take you more than a couple of read-throughs). One you’re able to do that, you can move on to the next chapter.