In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary says that it is often difficult to tell which of these two colors is meant in Old English texts when the context doesn’t make it clear. “Black” comes from very old words that meant “to burn” or “burned.” But the same old words also gave us “blake,” which is a now obscure word that meant pale, pallid, and ashen. KanaĪnd that's all there is to it.In nearly all languages, the first colors to get names are black and white. To ask "what color" something is, you can use the question word nani-iro. Literally "ash color", another word is nezumiiro "mouse color"Īgain, the iro found in many of these words is the root word for "color".Īll of these words require the particle no to be used as modifiers, and use the copula to predicate a sentence. There is no distinction between "violet" and "purple" in Japanese (some English speakers also make no distinction)Ī borrowed word, a similar color is daidaiiro (dark orange)Ī borrowed word, a similar color is momoiro "peach color" Same as in the English sense – bright green and dark green, a shade of ao Here are the ones you will want to memorize.
The remaining colors are all no-adjectives (nouns) and have no further complications. Japanese people also consider the ocean to be ao, which makes sense considering that seawater is just as green up close as it is blue from a distance. Kanaįun fact: Japanese traffic lights are indeed somewhat bluish compared to those in North America. So occasionally in places where English speakers would use "green", Japanese people would instead use ao. Actually, it refers to this entire spectrum, and our blue, teal, and green would all be considered shades of ao. Blue and GreenĪlthough it seems strange to westerners, ao (or aoi) can mean either "blue" or "green" in Japanese. However, due to the influence of Kanji, compound words including colors generally use the on-yomi (Chinese reading) of the character rather than the independent words. You would also use aka to refer to "the color red", which is similar to how color words in English are used as both nouns and adjectives.įinally, the noun forms are also used in some compound words. Fortunately, the rule itself is without exception: when using primary colors to modify a noun, use the i-adjective form otherwise, use the no-adjective form. Other color words are normal no-adjectives, so these five are really the exception rather than the rule. Thus we have akai booru (a red ball), but: Kana However, when you want to say that something is some color (the predicate function), you must use the no-adjective (noun) equivalent of the word.
We'll discuss aoi (blue/green) more in a moment.Īs with any i-adjective, you simply place the word in front of the noun being colored. The word for "color" is いろ (iro), which you can see embedded in kiiroi (yellow).Īctually, even kiiroi could be considered less basic than the other four, since it requires the kanji for "yellow color" (黄色い） rather than just one kanji (赤い、青い、白い、黒い）. The primary colors in Japanese are all i-adjectives, which agrees with the idea that i-adjectives tend to represent more basic concepts than na-adjectives. As it turns out, the basic colors in Japanese are very similar to those in English, but there is one major difference in the blue-green area of the spectrum. It should come as no surprise, then, that languages also vary in how they name colors, even very basic colors. This is because words for colors are inherently arbitrary, since there are an unlimited number of ways to break up spectrum of red to violet, not to mention differences in brightness and saturation. If you ask several people what they would call a particular color, you're likely to get a variety of responses. As we go through the Japanese color words, there are also a couple of important points we can cover regarding their use. Japanese words for colors are predominantly no-adjectives, in contrast other basic adjectives, which are primarily i-adjectives and na-adjectives.
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