Colours in Japanese

Colour in Japanese is 色 (いろ) and using colours works a little different in Japanese than in English. In English, you can use all colours in the same way. One option is putting it in front of a word to say something about it. If you want to say which colour the car is, you just put the colour in front of it, and you get a green, red, pink or even deep turquoise car. In every case, the colour can simply precede the noun (the car in this instance).

In Japanese, there is only a small group of colours that can be used as adjectives in this way, although this is an important group. Most colours are used as nouns and take the possessive の when it precedes another noun. The colours that can be used as adjective are い-adjectives and conjugate in the same way as other い-adjectives

• Main lesson 1: Most Japanese colours are used as nouns and take the possessive の but a small important group can be used as い-adjective

Standard way to use colours in Japanese

First, let’s look at some ways how to use colours in Japanese. Below, we will go into the two different colour groups in more detail. 

Colours as い-adjective

So there are a handfull of colours that function as い-adjectives. You probably already know how い-adjectives work in Japanese. If not, check this article out. The concept for colours is more or less the same. The colours start out as simple nouns as you see them below but when you use it as an adjective you add an い.

Japanese Colours as nouns

Most Japanese colours are nouns which means that when you want to use them as adjective you have to use a の to connect it with the noun you want to say something about. First a short list of this group of colours and then some examples.