Colors!
Colors are an interesting concept in Japanese. There are two basic types of color names. The first type includes colors that end with an optional i. The other type are colors that never end with an i. Here's a nice table of colors that can end in i. The first bolded word is the name with the ending i, and the second is without.
|
akai aka red aoi ao blue |
kiiroi kiiro yellow chairoi chairo brown |
kuroi kuro black
shiroi
shiro white |
These next colors are the "other" colors. They only have one name each.
|
murasaki purple haiiro gray |
orenji orange pinku pink |
green midori |
When used in a simple sentence, any version of a color can be used:
Sora wa aoi desu.
The sky is blue.
Inu wa chairo desu.
The dog is brown.
The car is green.
When saying something like "red car", it can get a bit more complicated. If the color you want to use is in the first category, there are two options: you can simply place the two words together like "akai kuruma", or you can drop the final i and use the particle no between them, like "aka no kuruma". If the color you want to use is in the second category, then you need to place a no between the words, like "orenji no kuruma". Below are a few more examples of how you can use colors in sentences.
Kiiro no sakana wa oishii desu.
The yellow fish is delicious.
I don't like green houses.
Her book is brown.
Using a color to describe what something is not is not very complicated in Japanese. With colors in the second category, like orenji and midori, you just use the color as you would a na-adjective:
The cat isn't purple.
For first category colors, like akai, you can chose whether you want to consider them as na-adjectives ("aka") or i-adjectives ("akai"). It really doesn't matter, since the last i is removed from the word if you consider it an i-adjective anyway. See the example below.
Kuruma wa akaku nai desu.
The car isn't red.
For more information on negative sentences, see our previous lesson on the topic.