Ch 35 · Lesson 25Spanish · Chapter 35 · Lesson 25 · Themed review
Los colores
Colours arrive slowly in a frequency course - in chapter 1, not for another thirty-odd. Here they finally sit together.
Practise this lesson
15-word session
A quick mix of exercises - recognise, recall, type and build each word. Miss one and it comes back round until it sticks.
Worth knowing
Colours agree with the noun, except the ones that are secretly fruit
Colours arrive slowly in a frequency course, because people say white and black constantly and purple almost never. and are early words. is not.
Now they are all in one place, and the grammar is mostly easy with one sharp exception.
Most of them agree
, , . Colours are adjectives and they behave like adjectives: they follow the noun and they match it in gender and number.
The ones ending in -e or a consonant only change for number: , . , . , .
The ones that do not change at all
and are fruit and flower first, colour second. When they are used as colours they are really shorthand for the colour of an orange, and a noun cannot agree with anything.
So traditionally , not . , not .
You will hear both. and as plural adjectives are common in speech, and the RAE now accepts them, but careful writing still tends to avoid them, which is exactly the situation English is in with less and fewer.
Describing people
Spanish uses a separate set of words for hair and skin, and using the object colours instead sounds wrong.
is dark-haired or dark-skinned. is blond. Castaño is chestnut brown, for hair. is pale.
You do not say someone has . You say .
is worth a note: across most of the Spanish-speaking world it is neutral and descriptive, applied to hair, tans and complexions alike, though in some countries it is also used, often euphemistically, for a Black person. It is not the loaded word an English speaker might assume from its shape.
claro and oscuro
is light, is dark, and both go after the colour without agreeing: , . In careful Spanish the whole pair then stays put: , .
on its own is also of course, and it is one of the most common conversational words in the language.