"あお"
Translation:blue
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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.
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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.)
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 "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
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."
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
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Also green. Color words rarely if ever match precisely, because color is a continuum and it's arbitrary how the spectrum gets divided up. Gambatte ne.
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I wouldn't necessarily say "more of"
Today it is only mainly used for "green" in compound words and in terms of traffic lights, (unripe) plants and general "youth". As "green" the color it's considered a bit of an archaism.
As a color it mostly refers to blue/azure, with 緑・みどり the most commonly used word for the color "green".
緑・みどり is the standard word to refer to the color "green"
青・あお is the standard word to refer to the color "blue"
There is some overlap with blue-greens usually falling under 青 as well or written as the similar combined 青緑 "blue-green"
青・あお as one of the four traditional Japanese colors (black, red, white and 'blue') was used to refer to both blues and greens (and more specifically these terms described the concepts of 'light, dark, clear and vague')
Like many cultures there was no original distinction between blues and green (blue as a concept didn't really exist in English either for much of history, with the sky often being 'clear', 'gray', and the sea being 'green', 'dark' but never 'blue')
As new color terms are created the older broader terms get more designated roles, with あお shifting to mean 'blue' and みどり being adopted for 'green'
This usage holds over when referring to 'green' plants (in terms of unripe/young/youthful) and in compound words like 青春 aoharu "youth" (lit. 'green-spring') and 青信号 aoshingou "green traffic light"
While 緑・みどり is used in other situations when describing something as the color 'green' and for "green" such as "greenery" (plants in general)
青空 "blue sky"
緑茶 "green tea"