"The national colors are green and yellow."

Translation: As cores nacionais são verde e amarelo.

[Paulie-Waulie]

Is "nacional" and "nacionais" both masculine and feminine as an adjective? (Does this happen with other words? Sorry if it's a stupid question!)

[Paulenrique]

Yes, some adjetives are the same for both masculine and feminine. Nacional is one of them.

[barbaratorrance]

this is just too complicated for an old lady to comprehend

[verinapk]

Oh no my dear , keep working, the fact that you are prepared to learn a new language in itself is encouraging , so bravo!

[e.cambourn]

Why is amarela not accepted?

[Davu]

I believe that unless you are using a colour as an adjective you should choose the masculine form.

[livio.alves]

Because there is no reason to use the color in the female form, "amarelo" is the original form, this color is 'male', "rosa" on the other side, is 'female' {actually, "rosa"-pink- never changes to the male form, "roso" does not exists, same to "laranja" - oranje, or "cinza"- gray, "violeta"- violet, or all 'female' colors, which are a few of the total } when you say "as cores a que eu me refiro são..." {the colours that i refer is... }you have to complete this sentence with the original forms -substantive, not adjectives- of the colors {'male' colors, like "amarelo", in the 'male' form, 'female' colors in the 'female' forms} , SOME 'male' colors can be used in the 'female' forms when you use as an adjective, so "the housei s yellow" means "a casa é amarelA" ,not all 'male' colors accepts this, for example,- "a casa é azul",- "azula" does not exists, "azul" is invariant in genre, like "verde" - green and "marrom" - brown.
Resuming, in the context of the frase, the colors are nouns, not adjectives, so you use the original forms.

[drewarnold72]

Why aren't green and yellow in the plural form in the sentence?

[Paulenrique]

cause it is in a general sense.... it is the color of the nation, so in this case the color has to be in singular. as cores dos uniformes são branco e azul. although we have "cores" because we have two colors in the uniforms, the uniform itself has a "singular" color. got it?

[deactivated user]

This still doesn't really make any sense. The uniform doesn't have a singular color, it has 2 colors? I thought that when you use an adjective with ser (ele é, ela é, etc) that the adjective has to agree with the subject both gender and number?

[Lunga311411]

There is only one uniform though, if there were plural uniforms, then so would the adjectives for the uniform.

[moudy93]

Translate the sentence to English and you will find the answer to that question..

[AlisonShep5]

I’ve read the discussion but still don’t understand why amarela is wrong. I thought that it was one adjective that agreed with the gender of the thing it was describing, in this case as cores which I understood to be feminine?

[brightredchilli]

I'm confused as to why this is 'as cores nacionais', and not 'as cores nacional'. If I wanted to say, this shirt's colors are green and yellow, i would say: 'as cores desta camisa sao verde e amarelo'(i presume), with camisa being in singular. Since we're talking about one nation(the national), why would this be in the plural?

[Lunga311411]

"Nacional" in this context isn't an object, it's an adjective, so it has a plural form in this context. If it was "As cores da nação" then it wouldn't need to be in plural form.

[brightredchilli]

Thanks, that helped me see through what i was getting wrong!