![]() ![]() The first kanji 真 means “true” and the second one, 黒, means “black”. So use this list to get you started.īy the way, some of these colors may seem difficult, but once you learn more Japanese, they make sense. In fact, it’d be easiest to memorize the names by looking at the color rather than trying to compare to English. I’ll explain why in a moment, but it can get confusing sometimes.ĭon’t worry though - I’ve shared some links after the list that have more colors and their hex color shades, so you can check any of them out yourself. ![]() The pale pink-orange of peach fruit is 肌色 ( hadairo), “skin color”.Īlso, 青 ( ao, “blue”) is often used to describe green things. But in Japanese, it refers to the pink color of the peach tree blossoms, not the peach fruit. Because colors in Japanese don’t always align with what we expect.įor example, 桃色 actually means “peach color” in Japanese. This is where things get a little tricky though. Still need to learn how to read and write in Japanese? Check out these articles to get started:Ĭool, we’ve mastered the basics! That’s a huge first step.īut I’m sure you want to know more than the basic colors of the rainbow, right?Īfter all, our world is filled with all the colors in a Crayola box and more! So we need to learn how to talk about things like gold, silver, light blue, dark green, lavender, rose, turquoise, and so many more. Of course, colors like green in Japanese (緑, midori), don’t follow that rule, so you’ll need to memorize those. One thing to note is that several of the colors end in 色 ( iro), which is the Japanese word for “color.” That will help you recognize them. Here’s a color chart plus their alternate names, in both hiragana and kanji: (Valentine’s Day in Japan is reversed: women give their loves and friends chocolates.) And the English loan word is often used for things like White Day, the holiday most like our Valentine’s Day where men treat women. But it does have its own native Japanese word: 橙色 ( daidaiiro).Īnd this one you may have heard before: ホワイト ( howaito). The color orange in Japanese is most often said オレンジ, the English loan word. ![]() But there are some alternate ways to say them.įor example, purple in Japanese is 紫 ( murasaki), but sometimes you’ll hear the English loan word パープル ( pa-puru) written in Katakana. These are the most common ways to hear and use the colors. Let’s jump right in with our main, basic colors. Japanese Color Names as Nouns and Adjectives: Grammar Usage.Shades of Black, White, Grey, and Browns.Today, this serves to make the novel more easily comprehensible to those unfamiliar with Heian era court manners and titles, but we know that the author's contemporaries already referred to this character by this name - and nicknamed the author after her. This "Lady of the West Wing" is commonly named Murasaki in commentaries and translations. Thus in the case of Murasaki, the lady in the novel, the author often calls her "The Lady of the West Wing". When Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji, she followed the customs of her class and time, so that most of the characters in the novel are never identified by name, but rather by either their rank and title, rank and title of their male relatives, or after the name of their habitation. She served as a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Shoshi, and was a literary contemporary and rival of Sei Shōnagon. The author Murasaki was an aristocrat, the daughter of a provincial governor who probably belonged to a minor branch of the mighty Fujiwara clan. As a result, the real name of the author is lost, and she was called Murasaki Shikibu: Murasaki after the heroine she invented Shikibu after her father's official rank. In the court manners of the time, it was considered unacceptably familiar and vulgar, to freely address people by their personal name, or even by their clan's name. In both cases the name is a pseudonym, and the real names are unknown. Murasaki refers to both the heroine of the Genji Monogatari, and the book's author, Murasaki Shikibu. Freebase Rate this definition: 0.0 / 0 votes ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |