Japanese Colours: Words, Grammar, and Everyday Uses

Two kinds of colour word

Japanese has two grammatical kinds of colour word, and the split does not follow anything you can see. Four colours are true i-adjectives: 赤い akai red, 青い aoi blue, 白い shiroi white and 黒い kuroi black. They sit directly in front of a noun, end a sentence on their own, and conjugate like any other i-adjective, so a red car is akai kuruma, it is not black is kuroku nai desu, and it was white is shirokatta desu.

Every other colour is a noun. Green, purple, orange, pink and grey link to a noun with の no and end a sentence with です desu: midori no kaban is a green bag, and kaban wa midori desu means the bag is green. The negative is the noun negative, midori ja nai desu. The learner mistake is to invent midorii or pinkui by analogy with akai. Those forms do not exist, and a Japanese listener hears them immediately.

Colour words at a glance

Several nouns carry 色 iro inside them: 黄色 kiiro is literally yellow colour, 茶色 chairo is tea colour, 水色 mizuiro is water colour, and 灰色 haiiro is ash colour. You can add iro to the katakana colours too, so オレンジ色 orenjiiro and ピンク色 pinkuiro are both common, and they behave exactly like the plain nouns.

The noun form of every colour

Even the four i-adjectives have a noun form, made by dropping the い: 赤 aka, 青 ao, 白 shiro, 黒 kuro. You need the noun whenever the colour is the thing you are talking about rather than a description of something else. Liking a colour, choosing a colour, and answering what colour something is all use the noun: aka ga suki desu, aka ni shimasu, aka desu. Answering nani-iro desu ka with akai desu is understood, but it sounds like a description rather than an answer, and it marks a learner.

Note the reading of 何色. As a question about colour it is nani-iro. The same characters read nan-shoku mean how many colours, because 色 also works as a counter, as in 三色 sanshoku, three colours. Context settles it in conversation, but say nani-iro when you are asking what colour something is.

Kiiroi and chairoi, the halfway pair

黄色 kiiro and 茶色 chairo are nouns that end in iro, yet both have grown an i-adjective form: 黄色い kiiroi and 茶色い chairoi. In front of a noun the adjective form is the everyday choice, so a yellow flower is kiiroi hana and brown eyes are chairoi me. At the end of a sentence either form works: me wa chairo desu and me wa chairoi desu are both natural. No other iro noun does this. Mizuiroi and haiiroi do not exist, so treat the pair as an exception to memorise rather than a pattern to extend.

Why the green light is ao

Ao traditionally covered a range of colours that English splits into blue and green, and midori as a separate everyday colour name is comparatively recent. Modern speakers use midori for most green things, but ao survives in fixed words where it has always been used. The green traffic light is 青信号 aoshingō, green apples are 青りんご aoringo, leafy vegetables are 青野菜 aoyasai, and fresh spring leaves are 青葉 aoba. A learner who says midori shingō will be understood, but nobody says it.

Aoi also describes people. A face that has gone pale is 真っ青 massao, and someone inexperienced is まだ青い mada aoi, still green, exactly as in English. Keep these as set phrases, and use midori for anything new you want to call green, from a jumper to a mountainside.

Light, dark, and bright shades

Shades are built with ordinary adjectives in front of the colour noun. 薄い usui, thin, means pale or light: usui pinku, usui ao. 濃い koi, thick or strong, means deep or dark: koi ao, koi midori. 明るい akarui and 暗い kurai describe brightness rather than depth, so akarui iro is a bright, cheerful colour and kurai iro is a dark, sombre one. Because usui and koi are i-adjectives, you can compare with motto, more, and ask for mō sukoshi usui iro, a slightly lighter colour.

Japanese also has single words for common shades: 水色 mizuiro for light blue, 紺 kon for navy, 黄緑 kimidori for yellow-green. When one exists, speakers usually prefer it to a two-word description, so navy trousers are kon no zubon rather than koi ao no zubon, and a pale blue shirt is mizuiro no shatsu.

Katakana colours in shops and fashion

Clothing labels, websites and shop staff often use katakana loanwords: ブラック burakku, ホワイト howaito, レッド reddo, ブルー burū, グリーン gurīn, ネイビー neibī, ベージュ bēju, グレー gurē, カーキ kāki. They are all nouns and take no. Some exist only in katakana, since there is no everyday native word for beige or khaki, while others sit beside a Japanese word: gurē and haiiro, buraun and chairo. In speech the Japanese word is always safe, and staff will switch to whichever you use.

When you buy something, the useful move is to name the item, then the colour, then ask arimasu ka. Staff reply with the colours in stock, often in keigo with gozaimasu, and you close with ni shimasu. The list they give you is your answer sheet, so repeat one of their words rather than translating your own.

Colours that change

To say something turns a colour, use naru, to become, and the form depends again on the word type. I-adjectives drop the い and add く: 赤くなる akaku naru, 白くなる shiroku naru. Nouns take に: 緑になる midori ni naru, ピンクになる pinku ni naru. The same split applies to the verbs that give colour: 塗る nuru, to paint, takes shiroku or shiro ni, and 染める someru, to dye, usually takes the colour noun with ni. Kami o chairo ni somemashita, I dyed my hair brown, is a sentence you will hear often.

Colour words in set expressions

Colour words carry a set of idioms that come up in offices, news and everyday chat. Red and black split money: 赤字 akaji is a loss and 黒字 kuroji is a profit, the same image as in the red in English. The prefix 真っ ma gives extremes: 真っ白 masshiro is pure white and, applied to your head, means your mind went blank, while 真っ赤 makka is bright red, usually a face. 白黒つける shirokuro tsukeru is to settle a matter one way or the other. 赤の他人 aka no tanin is a complete stranger, and 腹黒い haraguroi, black-bellied, means scheming.

Two everyday words hide the character 色 with the sense of variety rather than colour. 色々 iroiro means various or all sorts, and 十人十色 jūnin toiro, ten people ten colours, is the proverb for everyone being different. You will use iroiro in almost every conversation, so it is worth knowing where it comes from.

Asking and answering about colour

Colour is one of the fastest ways to identify something, so the questions are short and the answers are usually one noun. Nani-iro desu ka asks the colour of a known thing; donna iro desu ka invites a description when the colour is unusual. To ask the name of a colour you can see, point and say kono iro wa nan to iimasu ka. When you describe a person, the colour comes before the item of clothing and the item takes o kite iru, so the friend you are looking for is akai kōto o kite iru hito, the person wearing the red coat.

A drill that fixes the two kinds

• Name ten things around you by colour, using the adjective form for akai, aoi, shiroi and kuroi and no for everything else.
• Say each of the ten in the negative: kuroku nai desu, midori ja nai desu. The negative is where the two kinds differ most.
• Turn five of them into changes with naru: akaku naru, pinku ni naru, and say each pair twice.
• Describe what three people near you are wearing, colour first, then the item, then o kite imasu.
• Run a shop exchange aloud: ask nani-iro ga arimasu ka, invent a three-colour reply in gozaimasu form, and choose with ni shimasu.
• Ask nani-iro desu ka about five objects and answer with a bare noun each time, never with the i-adjective.