Modern colours are a katakana jungle.

With the advent of colour computer mixers it is possible to make any colour one wants. The advertisers are forever changing and creating names for these colours. If one picks the right name and that colour becomes popular, perhaps because some starlet-pop-idol creature wears an outfit in that particular colour, then the company stands to make millions from the paint or the dye. Colour is business. 

Modern colour is katakana. Often one can guess the name of the colour, but sometimes not even the word ‘obscure’ can describe it. Anyway, here goes:

This year’s summer fashion colours

Where to begin with fashion? 

As companies can produce more and more colours with new machinery, so can advertising come up with new vocabulary. In everyday conversation people still use the old ‘red’ and ‘blue’, but increasingly they use different descriptors for their new environment. Lots of those new words come from English, but many come from French or Italian. Mind you, look around you and where do you still see colours that are pure whatever? 

This idea is nothing unique to Japanese. The English also use colours that are not pure whatever; they use turquoise (from Turkish) and aquamarine (from sea water) and cobalt (from some nasty mineral; you’d die if you touched it) and suede (from Swedish), although the last one is leather and that too can now be dyed in many colours.

107 Colours II 色 いろ iro

COLOUR or COLOR

Colour is an extremely important part of our lives. It helps us to tell the difference. It makes life more beautiful. It gives us a sense of emotional warmth. Children learn at an early stage about colours and how they are put together.

This simple cartoon-like picture beautifully demonstrates how different colours make another one. This picture in a beautiful way opens up the child’s mind to introducing different cultural and ethnic differences too.

A teenager’s delight!

In Japan too there are a million colours to choose from. As new colours are created, new names come about and in Japanese they usually mean “katakana colours”, though not always.

Where once in Takasaki all daruma were red, they now have almost all colours of the rainbow.

On the computer one can set any image to almost any colour one wishes. Paints are created and identified by computer. Shades are pure and standard.

The human touch of the potter is now merely a push on a button.

Welcome katakana!

New flower colours are bred.

Your cupboards can have a make-over.

Turquoise from Turkey. Mustard from France. Grey from America. Blue from the navy. Pink from Barbie-land.

Why stop at one colour!

Beautiful colours きれいないろ

Colours in action

107 Colours I 色 いろ

305 Mixing colours いろといろの

And there you have it!　

You can add more colours in a sentence by using more とs.

305 More adjectives

More about adjectives:            (see also the colours page)

thinking…thinking…

   

Uuuhhhh… yes.

There are three types of adjectives in Japanese:

1. ~ い adjectives
2. ~ な adjectives
3. ~ の adjectives

To tell them apart is easy, because all adjectives that end in い are い adjectives. All adjectives that don’t end in い are not. Except for less-then-a-hand-full of them. They look on the outside like い adjectives, but they are not. The reason is the original kanji used for these adjectives. Never mind.

These are the four exceptions:

(These adjectives LOOK like い adjectives, but they are な adjectives)

These 4 adjectives are な adjectives! Have a look at the following chart. The groups are clearly separated.

This is a little commercial break.

Make a tea or something.

Have some happy thoughts.

And back to reality again:

The last question that might interest you: which are な and which are の adjectives. That question is trickier. Nouns and pronouns can be used as adjectives and then they are の adjectives.

But how do you know what is a noun used adjectivally? Feeling – you get a feeling for it. And a dictionary helps. To be realistic, as you learn words you feel straightaway whether it is a な adjective or not. In reality there is not really a problem. As you go along you learn the な adjectives. On another page we will give you a list of the most commonly used な adjectives, if that helps, with the same NCEA305 number.

Oddly enough, the only adjectives that cause hassles are a handful of の colours and they fall in this group.

みどり is the most-commonly-done-wrong の adjective.

305 Colours II 色 いろ

In Japanese you place the colour adjective in front of the noun. As you can see from the following chart, there are two groups. Half take の  and half don’t.

 Yours for the asking:

That was a beautiful and colourful experience!