"A green-white dress"
Translation:Ein grün-weißes Kleid
12 Comments
What exactly do you mean? Which behaviour precisely? Hyphenated adjectives aren't very common, but a rule is: the first word is used in nominative, while the second one gets inflected.
2091
The compound grün-weiß constitutes a single adjective. The suffix -es is only appended once to the end of the adjective.
I entered "Ein grünweißes Kleid" and it was accepted, albeit it "corrected" me for leaving out the "-" and called it a typo. My German friend would type it without the "-" though, dunno if it's the spelling reform or what.
- 2091
The hyphen is used to emphasize the border between coequal words like "green" and "white". So it is better to add the hyphen in this case.
- 2091
The suffix -es of adjective weiß tells that the noun das Kleid is neuter.
- der weiße Tisch - ein weißer Tisch (male)
- die weiße Lampe - eine weiße Lampe (female)
- das weiße Kleid - ein weißes Kleid (neuter)
Does "grün-weißes" mean that the shirt is one color, a greenish white, or that it has both colors - for instance, that it is green-and-white striped?
"Grün-weiß" means that both of the colors are present. But note that for neighboring hues like "blaugrün" a color somewhere in between blue and green is meant. Similarly, "rotbraun" means a reddish brown.
EDIT: In the past there was a rule that mixed colors (greenish white) were written as one word grünweiß while combinations of distinct colors (green and white) were written with a hyphen grün-weiß. This rule was very handy and I don't know exactly why it isn't mandatory anymore. Nonetheless, you can still use it, that's what I do and that's what I recommend. If you want to make it absolutely unambiguous that you are talking about a greenish white, just say "grünlich weiß".
