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- "あお"
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Fun irrelevant fact: In Chinese, that's the character for "green". Which makes remembering this all kinds of fun let me tell you ^^"
In both Chinese and Japanese, 青 (あお) actually refers to both blue and green. The Japanese word for green, 緑 (みどり), is relatively recent, and many green things are still referred to as 青, such as some plants and vegetables, and the traffic light.
Actually, us chinese use more 绿(this is simplified) than 青 in daily life, at least i believe so, 青 is used more in literature. Btw kanji is basically Chinese but most kanji characters are traditional chinese instead of simplified
I thought that midori 緑 meant green. Is there more than one word for different kinds of green?
Yes. Different cultures break up the color spectrum differently.緑 refers to the greens starting at the more yellow end of the spectrum to the middle and 青 starts at the more blue and and goes into shades of what English speakers call blue and sometimes call green. Traffic signal is 青 deep green of older bamboo is 青 blue of the ocean is 青
For instance, you, English speaking people, call "red" that is ginger or brownish to me, French. And "yellow" what is "orange", so it's very cultural. How we see colors is influenced by the names we have in our own languages. If the word doesn't exist, we are not able to make the difference between 2 concepts of 2 colors!
Inuits are said to have several dozens of words for the whiteness (of the ice) that we aren't even able to distinguish with our eyes.
Thank you. I'm finding that Japanese and, more so, Chinese is a bit challenging with the different spellings & speaking of blues and greens. Depending on the variations of context.
Is it true that that's the reason why there are no green traffic lights. There are blue ones, right?
青，in Chinese it can be used to refer to at least three colors, leaf green, hair black, sky blue :) or bruise purple...
Fun irrevelent fac: Japanese orginated from Chinese as Chinese was the first(or one of the first) country in Asia to have a writing and speaking system(if it make sense), but then the Japanese did something and Japanese was born
Yes on the writing system, but a big no on the speaking part. Japanese did not evolve from Chinese, and the two look and sound almost nothing alike in both grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. Chinese is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family (related to Burmese and Tibetan and a small host of others), while Japanese is part of the Japonic languages and together with Ryukyuan is basically unrelated to any other known languages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonic_languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Tibetan_languages
Sorry, I'm kind of into linguistics and get a little annoyed when people say nationalistic stuff like this. [2019/03/22]
actually they borrowed a lot of words from Chinese too. For example in Japan it is a big no-no to give somebody anything in groups of four because 四 (four) and 死 (death) are both pronounced shi from the Chinese words except Japanese doesn't have the tones to differentiate them. As a result they associate four with death. Most kanji use both 訓読み and 音読み (kunyomi and onyomi) pronounciations meaning "meaning reading" and "sound reading" respectively. The first is the Japanese pronounciation, the second is the Chinese pronunciation.
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There are a lot of foreign-borrowed words in Japanese (and also in English!) I mean... Just try ordering anything off of the Starbucks menu in Japan...correctly. (Katakana-written foreign-borrowed words can be a nightmare for non-natives to pronounce correctly, ironically.)
Actually, Japan had no written language, so they borrowed China's system.
Green in Mandarin (Simplified) is 绿色 lǚ sè (lyu se) Blue in mandarin is 蓝色 Lán sé
This joke circulating around Duolingo helped me remember what blue is in Japanese: What is Michael Jackson's favorite color? AO!
The only reason i remember this word means blue is because of one of the naruto shippuden openings. I feel lile such an otaku rn
Another way you can remember (if I remember correctly lol) is the character Ao, the fifth Mizukage's bodyguard. His name literally translates to "blue" or "green"
Correct !
Ao is the one with a transplanted Byakugan eye, one of Fifth Mizukage's aide.
He has blue hair, wears an indigo headband along with a turquoise attire.
Even Mizukage's dress is blue.
Ao = Blue.
And, Welcome fellow anime viewers. This particular reference is from Naruto Shippuden.
I'm guessing you use "ao" when talking specifically about blue, like "Blue is a pretty colour" VS "aoi" for sentences like "The dog is blue".
Several colours have a noun form and and adjective form. あお, しろ, andくろ are the nouns blue, white, and black. You can say 犬(いぬ)は白(しろ)です。"(The) dog is white." あおい, しろい, and くろい are the adjectives blue, white, and black. You could say 白い(しろい)犬(いぬ)です。Which could mean alot of things, but in this context, "(The) white dog." Most of this won't really matter until you start learning adjective and noun conjugation, so just store it away until then.
The い means it is describing something. You add to the end of any color (except those that already end with い). I will seperate using commas. Ex: There is a blue backpack. あおい, ばっくぱっく, が, あります. Ex: There is a green apple. みどり, りんご, が, あります. You can also use like so: Ex: There is a pretty dog. きれい, いぬ, が, います.
This is a bit of a long read but I think it'll be worth it, it'll eliminate a lot of future confusion:
Both! But with the extra i at the end of Ao, it's turning it into an adjective. Ao by itself means just the colour blue, and Aoi should be connected to something else to make IT blue. These are called i-adjectives, and the same principle can be applied to any other colour:
しろ(ShiRo): White, the colour しろい: White, but used to describe something ELSE as white.
くろ(KuRo): Black くろい : Black, but adj form
あか(AKa): Red あかい: Red, but making something ELSE red
etc.
And it's not just colours that can be i-adjectives, either! You'll learn more about those later and I don't want to overload anyone with information, so I'll just give one example:
おもしろい: Interesting, fun. You can take off the i at the end of i-adj's to change the ending of the word, another thing you'll learn later on, but it'll be how you make them past tense or negative.
Sorry for the long read, but hopefully this explains why coulours can have i's at the end sometimes and not others! I didn't learn this for a very long time when I began and I was really confused as well, so I'm glad if this clears up confusion for any new speakers who come through!
The japanese word for the color green, 緑, already ends with an "i" sound, so how would I turn that into an adjective?
The "add an い" rule only applies to some colors. Red, black, white and blue are the oldest color words in Japanese and have their own adjective forms. Newer color words are either loan words or are only used as nouns. (Though also note it isn't unusual at all to have more than one い in a word, either. 可愛い - かわいい - kawaii - "cute" has one "i" sound that is part of the kanji and the second "i" that is part of the adjective conjugation)
緑 is a noun and what is called a "no-adjective", meaning that it attaches to another noun with the use of the possessive/grouping particle の
緑のシャツ midori no shatsu - green shirt
シャツは緑です shatsu wa midori desu - the shirt is green
The oppening of naruto "blue bird" is kinda "aoi aoi ano sora" i never knew of that gonna help me someday
あの - "That" (far from both speaker and listener)
空・そら - "sky"
青い青いあの空 - "That blue blue sky"
To all One Piece fans who wanna remember this well: AOKiji - Aokiji is also called Blue Pheasant
I know that Ao means blue, because of the game Ao Oni. The only ironic thing is that the oni is purple.
Has anybody seen the second live action movie for that? It was so much better than the first.
Thanks to the Kuroko no Basuke's Generation of Miracles i know the basics) AOmine, AKAshi, MIDORIma, MURASAKIbara you know
Just remember that Aoda, Sasuke's summoning snake is blue from Naruto. That's how I remember it. "A-O"
Duo hasn't started doing Kanji in this section. 青 is pronounced あお, so they are the same word.
They do after ? Because I prefer learn with kanjis (I know yet katakana and hiragana)
Sorry for double reply, but I notice you are also learning English. You could have asked "They do after what?" to mean the exact point when Kanji is introduced. "They do after?" could be misunderstood to ask if they introduce Kanji after this lesson. In English, when you use 2 verbs together, one becomes an adverb, and you put "to" between them. Because you are modifying "learn" with "prefer," it is "I prefer to learn..." Kanji is both singular and plural, so "Kanjis" is wrong. "Yet" means something in the future, not present, so you are saying that you still need to learn the Kana. The way I understood your meaning is, "When do they? I prefer to learn with Kanji because I already know Katakana and Hiragana."
Ao is the noun, the color blue
あおが好きです - I like blue
あおはきれいです - blue is pretty
Aoi is the adjective
あおいペンです - It is a blue pen
そらはあおい - The sky is blue
こんにちわ！ 私達 一緒に勉強する。
あお/青 = blue あか/赤 = red しろ/白 = white くる/来る = black Is this correct? What is adjective? I'm forget about this.
あか しろ is color of my flag. What's yours?
Almost! *こんにちは :)
Black is 黒・くろ
来る・くる is the verb "to come"
An adjective is a word that describes a noun.
青い空・あおいそら・aoi sora - "Blue sky" - "Blue" is an adjective, it describes the noun "sky"
青い・あおい・aoi - blue - adjective "is blue"
A noun is any person, place, or thing
青が好きです・あおがすきです・ao ga suki desu - "I like blue" uses "blue" as a noun
青・あお・ao - blue - noun
Same way like the word "well". For example: "Can you go to the well and get me some water" and: "He's doing well". Same word, two completely different meanings. Same with many other words in English, like "Fine", "Right", "Fly", etc.
Fun mnemonic, I associate the sound of blue with Ow! When you bump yourself and get a bruise, and bruises are blue. Lol
