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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.
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
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
It's actually 'nature-coloured' in both Chinese and Japanese.
The Taiwanese/Nationalist flag, for example, is known as a 「青天白日」，or 'white sun upon an azure sky', where the 「青」refers to the blue part.
It could also be bronze (青銅), or even black.
青，in Chinese it can be used to refer to at least three colors, leaf green, hair black, sky blue :) or bruise purple...
Green in Mandarin (Simplified) is 绿色 lǚ sè (lyu se) Blue in mandarin is 蓝色 Lán sé
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.
Actually, Japan had no written language, so they borrowed China's system.
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"
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 Anime/ Manga series 'Ao No Exorcist / Blue Exorcist' makes it easier to remember.. :D
To all One Piece fans who wanna remember this well: AOKiji - Aokiji is also called Blue Pheasant
The oppening of naruto "blue bird" is kinda "aoi aoi ano sora" i never knew of that gonna help me someday
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."
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.
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"
